Schools closed in Cape Breton Friday after messy mix overnight

To some Cape Bretoners, waking up Friday morning may have felt like insult added to winter injury, with people taking their ice scrapers out and shovels to clean up the mess.

"There's a lot of wet stuff underneath that's starting to freeze,” said Charlie Price, who was shoveling in front of St. Patrick’s Church in the north end of Sydney on Friday morning.

Sidewalks were covered with a messy mix after a night of freezing rain and ice pellets, followed by some snow.

School was cancelled for the day in the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Centre for Education, which came as a surprise to some as a lot of roads were clear by mid-morning.

"I am (surprised), but I used to drive school bus,” Price said.

“So I know that it doesn't take very much for the school board to get the buses off of the street."

"I kind of understand it. It was pretty icy out this morning,” said Angie MacDonald, general manager of Island Martial Arts Centre, which is an after-school program that opened at 10 a.m. on Friday.

MacDonald said the decision to open gave parents a place to send their children, who otherwise got an early start to March break.

"This morning, I made the call to open a little later,” MacDonald said.

“Like I said, it was just a little bit too icy and it's not just my staff. I don't want our parents feeling the need to have to go out."

A season that has been full of snow has also been hard on the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s bottom line.

"So salt trucks are out and salting all the roads,” said Jenna MacQueen of CBRM communications.

“They also have the blades down as well, to scrape off any ice from the roadways. Even though we went over our snow removal budget for the year, if there's snow or ice or anything that needs to be handled, we do need to do snow removal and ice."

Many people around Cape Breton have no doubt had enough of the winter, especially after the area saw around 150 centimetres of snow last month.

"I think everybody feels that way,” MacQueen said. “Excited for winter to be over, and spring to be coming."

Another issue on Friday was the wind. Sustained winds in the Sydney area were in the mid-to-high thirties, and the strongest gusts reached closer to 70 kilometres an hour.

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