Winter weather wallops N.B. until early Sunday morning

It was a final blast of winter on the final day of the season, with a large swath of the Maritimes encased in ice on Sunday morning.

Freezing rain overnight made for heavy tree branches and slippery streets, but the bigger issue was the power grid.

"We had outages mostly in the Fredericton and Miramichi regions. At the height of the outages we had roughly 7,200 customers affected in those regions,” said Dominique Couture, with NB Power. “We're expecting all customers to be restored by the end of this day.”

New Brunswick Power was on high alert with Saturday night's forecast.

"We're always preparing for any sort of weather event,” Couture said.

“In this case, we were looking at potential ice accumulation on power lines and high winds. We did not see a lot of ice accumulation on the lines, but lots on branches of trees, so we make sure that we allocated resources in all the districts so that we're ready to respond safely and efficiently,” she said.

Other regions of the Maritimes saw wet weather.

Largely a rain-event in the Halifax-area, the storm washed-away the last of the snow and left plenty of water running in storm water systems.

Temperatures were mild Sunday, and the system had moved on by the time most people got up.

It's been a memorable March — for all the wrong reasons.

"It's the second March weekend in a row where we had to deal with a weather system that brought in a mix of precipitation,” said Kalin Mitchell, CTV Atlantic’s Chief Meteorologist.

“Of course this time, with it the big issue was the prolonged period of freezing rain that came in for several parts of the Maritimes as we went through Saturday night, and into Sunday morning.”

But by the afternoon in Fredericton, the sun was peaking through the clouds and spring was in the air.

"I really like it, I'm originally from Cuba, so it feels really cool to see how spring works here because I've never experienced a spring when I was back home, so I really like it,” said Roxana Cardinas.

Bill Hall says he’s looking forward to the warm weather.

"Just getting out walking around, do the walking trails, do a little bit of biking, can't wait to get my scooter out things like that, and walking my dog,” said Hall.

Julia Reid enjoyed walking the city’s trails Sunday.

"Because I want to do a long run later today, and a little shopping,” said Julia Reid.

But, it's best not to put-away the winter coat just yet, says Mitchell.

"We're almost wrapped up with that weather system, there's still a little bit of lingering freezing rain for a few areas of Cape Breton but it's on its way out, and behind it for the start of next week we have temperatures that will be a little bit chilly and a chance of seeing some flurries in the Maritimes,” said Mitchell.