Storm threatens to bury eastern Newfoundland in up to 85 cm of snow

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This article was published 08/03/2024 (937 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – While some in St. John’s begrudgingly took out their shovels on Friday morning as a snowstorm set in, Shawn Leroux walked out his front door and put on his cross-country skis.

Environment Canada issued winter storm warnings calling for between 55 and 85 centimetres of snow in the city, and Leroux spent the morning skiing laps around a field across from the provincial legislature building.

“I’m a block away, they didn’t plow my road, so I just jumped out of my house, put my skis on in the driveway and skied to Confederation Building,” said Leroux, who is the youth development coordinator with the Avalon Nordic skiing club.

His first thought when he saw the mounting drifts was, “Ooh, there’s snow, that means I’m probably skiing for another two weeks,” the 44-year-old said in an interview Friday afternoon.

Friday’s storm is the second to bury eastern Newfoundland in less than a month. Environment Canada called for accumulations of up to 85 cm by Saturday morning across the island’s northern Avalon Peninsula, which includes the provincial capital. Parts of the southern Avalon and Burin peninsulas were forecast to see around 30 cm, with five cm of ice pellets on top of that.

As of Friday afternoon, winter storm warnings stretched from Terra Nova and the Connaigre Peninsula in central Newfoundland, to St. John’s in the east. The weather agency advised beleaguered shovellers to take frequent breaks while battling the mounds growing in their driveways.

David Neil, a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada, said accumulations around the city were around 30 cm by Friday afternoon. Some unplowed downtown streets had knee-deep drifts, and the fronts of cars facing the wind were becoming increasingly difficult to identify.

Though less than a month ago the city was buried by snowfall that began on Valentine’s Day, Neil said St. John’s has still seen lower-than-normal levels of precipitation this winter. And sadly for snow lovers like Leroux, some of that precipitation has been rain.

Rain even melted away a good bit of the snow left behind by the Feb. 14 storm, Neil noted.

Winter temperatures have been much warmer than normal across the province, particularly in Labrador, he added.

Leroux said even though St. John’s snow-to-rain fluctuations usually makes the cross-country skiing season follow a “two weeks on, two weeks off” pattern, the city’s outdoor winter living is better than some other places he’s lived, including Edmonton and Ottawa.

And despite the lower-than-normal snowfall this year, Leroux said he’s had many more ski days compared with other years. He’s logged about 500 kilometres on the trails so far this season, with more to come, thanks to Friday’s storm.

“It doesn’t get much better than in Newfoundland,” Leroux said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2024.