Weather watch: Cape Breton residents bracing for significant snow

There are strong indicators the relatively mild winter in Nova Scotia so far is about to change.

Cape Breton is bracing for a period of heavy snow stretching over several days.

“It's the news everywhere. You can't even go and have a cup of coffee and people are talking about it,” said Donnie Vaters, a Glace Bay, N.S., resident.

Many Cape Breton residents just finished cleaning up from a storm that dumped 15-to-20cms of snow in the area Monday, and after a quiet start to winter this weekend promises to make up for that.

“Oh my God, we're getting it all in one month,” said Vaters.

John Phalen, Cape Breton Regional Municipality Public Works central division manager, says the CBRM usually budgets for 13-to-15 weather events every winter and so far there have been only four.

But he notes salt consumption is way up.

“We've had a lot of raining, slushy events, not a lot of sun for the roads to dry up before the next freeze, so it's causing us to use more salt,” said Phalen.

On Thursday, CBRM crews got equipment ready to handle what could be multi-day snow event.

“Usually these events they will work 16 hours straight, and then try to get a break and comeback, so we have to be careful we don't want to run out of man power in the middle of an event,” said Phalen.

Aimee Romard, co-chair of the Coal Bowl Basketball Classic, says a team from Alberta will arrive in Halifax on Saturday, with two other teams scheduled to land in Sydney on Sunday.

“To be honest we're a little bit nervous,” she said.

Romard says the event will go on despite the forecast, but it remains to be seen what impacts it will have on scheduling for games slated to start on Monday.

“That's kind of out of our hands and up in the air. The only things we can do is look at our game schedule and try to adjust as best we can to make sure the games can still go on and we've got teams playing,” said Romard.

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