Snowfall causes school closures, power outages

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This article was published 09/02/2024 (587 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Six Westman school divisions cancelled classes or bus service on Thursday in the aftermath of heavy snowfall that hit the region the previous night.

The return of winter weather also caused several power outages across Manitoba on Thursday afternoon. The biggest was in the area around Rivers, where more than 1,000 customers were estimated to be without power.

Turtle Mountain based out of Killarney, Fort La Bosse based out of Virden and Southwest Horizon based out of Souris closed their schools for the day, while Park West School Division based out of Birtle and Beautiful Plains based out of Neepawa kept classes open but cancelled bus service.

Rolling River School Division also cancelled bus services and closed schools in Hutterite colonies but kept its other schools open. Brandon School Division kept buses running and classes open both in Brandon and the surrounding rural communities it serves.

South central Manitoba, including the Winnipeg, Steinbach and Carman areas, showed a greater number of outages than Westman.

Fort La Bosse Supt. Barry Pitz told the Sun by phone that his division’s policy is that if it is unsafe for school buses to operate, schools are closed for the day.

“We do have a large, large number of our students that travel to school by bus and so in the best interest of safety, schools are closed,” he said.

When the Sun reached him late Thursday morning, Pitz said it was still snowing in Virden. With the previous warm conditions creating a melt and thaw cycle, he said rural roads were already in bad shape before the latest snowfall.

“A fair amount of accumulation has happened over the last 24 hours and the wind is a major factor in terms of our back roads and blowing snow,” he said.

The division, he explained, assesses whether it is safe for buses to operate around 6 a.m. on school days. Notice of closures goes out to parents on the division’s website, flbsd.mb.ca.

While schools were closed, Pitz said teachers were still expected to carry out prep work from home.

His counterpart in Turtle Mountain, Supt. Grant Wiesner, told the Sun that teachers were asked to make their way to schools if it was safe to do so. He said ice on the roads in the division was the main factor in deciding not to run buses. Like in Fort La Bosse, Turtle Mountain closes schools to students if buses cannot operate.

It was around 3 p.m. when Wiesner talked to the Sun, with freezing rain still falling on Killarney. After a quick 15-minute visit to Killarney School earlier in the afternoon, Wiesner said his car had already been covered in a fresh layer of ice by the time he was leaving.

When schools are closed, Wiesner said the division notifies parents by email, on social media and through local radio stations and media outlets.

Some power outages popped up in Westman in the late afternoon.

On its X (formerly Twitter) account, Manitoba Hydro cited the cause of the outages as ice buildups and the weather.

An estimated 1,015 customers lost power in and around Rivers. By email, a Manitoba Hydro spokesperson said crews had been dispatched but a cause had yet to be determined.

A further 163 customers were reported to be without power to the northeast of Neepawa, with an estimated restoration time of 6:30 p.m. that evening.

One outage had been reported in Brandon, but affecting just five customers. The restoration date for that outage was estimated to be 7:30 p.m.

Manitoba Hydro’s map showed an outage in Riding Mountain National Park, but it was listed as planned with a restoration date of Feb. 16 at 4:30 p.m.

Natalie Hasell, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said Thursday that McCreary had the most reported snowfall in southern Manitoba at around 15 centimetres. Volunteer weather stations in Brandon had reported around four centimetres.

She said higher elevation areas like around Riding Mountain National Park and Melita were receiving more snow than lower lying areas.

“That snow should taper off later today,” Hasell said.

“We should see periods of light snow and then that should really end by sometime in the middle of the day tomorrow. We are also looking at winds that are supposed to increase to 30, gusting to 50 kilometres an hour, so we could see some blowing snow reducing visibility.”

After some time spent at or just above the freezing mark, temperatures are forecast for the rest of the week to be from -5 C to -8 C during the day and as cold as -15 C overnight.

Despite that, Hasell said the temperatures are still unseasonably warm. Typically, the daytime highs for this time of year are around -9 C.

That’s being caused by El Niño conditions, which stem from warm temperatures in the Pacific Ocean around the equator displacing the jet stream air currents and forcing colder air further north.

A snowfall warning issued for Brandon on Wednesday by Environment Canada ended on Thursday afternoon.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

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