When people in Cape Breton looked out their window on Monday, many wondered if they were victims of an early April Fool’s joke.
Ice coated trees and wires were virtually everywhere, and made driving treacherous.
Ice build-up in St. Ann’s Bay pushed the Englishtown Ferry askew.
The Torquil Maclean vessel sat parallel to the shoreline jammed in by the ice.
Crews will need Mother Nature to cooperate if they want to put the ferry back in place and assess the damage.
The conditions led to another day of closures for the Cape Breton Victoria Regional School Board, and led to widespread power outages in Eastern parts of Nova Scotia.
“The accumulation of water and ice on trees and branches and the wires, impacts the electrical system as they start to make contact with one another,” explains Neera Ritcey of Nova Scotia Power.
Ice was not an issue in western parts of Nova Scotia, instead, residents were dealing with localized flooding in places like Barrington.
The freezing is expected Monday night into Tuesday morning.
Those living in central or western parts of the province didn’t see salt trucks on the roads today preparing for freezing rain because the roads are still too wet.
“As its raining right now, really no point in putting salt on the road,” explains Darrin Natolino, Acting Superintendent of Winter Works in Halifax. “Purely a waste of salt, it would just waste away as we spread it, so for us this is just the calm before the storm.”
Natolino says he is not too concerned about the main roads, but says side roads could get slippery as the temperature drops.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jayson Baxter
