SYDNEY -- It's a common sight in many Maritime communities, large piles of snow, after some places received more than 60 centimetres this week. 

John Trites is still trying to clean his property up, and he's worried about the potential of some wet weather on the way this weekend.

"Like what happened down here a couple of years ago," Trites said. "The South End Community Centre, it all flooded right out. I hope we don't get that much rain."

Public works crews are also trying to stay ahead of the weekend weather system.

"So our crews are clearing the catch basins, clearing hydrants, trying to get as much snow cleaned up as possible before any other weather this weekend," said Cape Breton Regional Municipality spokesperson Jillian Moore.

Nova Scotia Power is preparing to launch its emergency operations centre Saturday evening to keep up with outages as the nasty weather arrives.

"We have our regular crews staged and ready," said Nova Scotia Power spokesperson Andrea Anderson."We have about 75 powerline technician crews, so that's 150 people who are on standby for this weekend, in addition to all of the people who will operate out of the emergency centre this weekend."

In Sydney, sidewalks are wall-to-wall snow banks, with lots of snow still left in the downtown.

"Let's just say it's not my favourite time of year, but when I arrived at work this morning and saw that a lot of the banks were starting to be cleared from our sideways, it was a really good sign," said Michelle Wilson of the Downtown Development Association."We did get a lot of snow this week. Winter kind of came out of nowhere."