The latest wallop of winter left Cape Breton buried under nearly 60 centimetres of snow — the largest one-day snowfall the area has seen in decades.
Sydney was effectively shut down on Monday following the storm and lingering snow squalls: businesses were forced to close, city streets were deserted, and the regional health authority operated on emergency status.
Though spring is set to officially begin on Friday, this storm brought the biggest single-day snowfall since 1964.
“I haven’t seen this much snow in 15 years. Then it used to be normal,” said local resident Donald Clements.
“It’s not so normal anymore.”
Extra crews were called in throughout the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
“We’ve been pretty busy. Out since 8 p.m. last night. Going on hour 19 now,” said plow operator Ryan Parsons.
By noon, the snow changed to freezing rain, leaving many streets covered in ice.
A section of Union Highway was shut down for more than 12 hours after poor visibility led tomulti-vehicle pile-ups on Union Highway.
“It ended up that there was exactly two locations of two separate accidents, one involving eight vehicles and one involving seven vehicles,” said Cst. Robert Stewart of the Cape Breton Regional Police Service.
“At that time there was heavy drifting snow and also zero visibility due to blowing snow in the area,” he said.
Police say the 22 people involved in the accidents suffered only minor injuries.
One of them was Nick Epifano.
“When I got to the bridge, I couldn’t see nothing. When I got down to the truck I just seen the back bumper of that truck and that was it,” Epifano said.
“I just hit it. I couldn’t put on the break or nothing. I didn’t have time,” he said.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kyle Moore
