HALIFAX – Just days after the last major snowfall in Nova Scotia, another storm is barreling down on the province and is forecast to bring up to another 30 centimetres to the Halifax region.
Environment Canada meteorologist Tracey Talbot said the morning commute on Wednesday could be messy.
“In through the Halifax area, we are expecting the snow to get pretty heavy by morning hours and the winds will be picking up as well,” she said.
The storm is expected to be comparable to the one that hit the region on Sunday, which brought snowfall amounts ranging from 20 to 40 centimetres.
“Winds will be probably a little more prolonged with this,” Talbot said. “We will see some blowing snow right through Wednesday night into Thursday.”
It’s prompting the city to urge residents to postpone non-essential travel because visibility is expected to be poor. As well, crews say they need as much room as possible to conduct their snow-clearing operation.
“For us, narrowed streets is a problem to begin with. You add on four or five feet of snow on either side on the snow bank, that just compounds the complexity for us,” said Darrin Natolino, superintendent of winter operations for Halifax.
“We have a lot of streets where if one car parks on it, right now a delivery truck can’t get through. Well if a delivery truck can’t get through, neither can my snow plow.”
Although it feels like we’ve had a record breaking winter, we’re far from it. As of Monday, Halifax has received 235 centimetres (7.7 feet) of snow The record snowfall amount was set in the winter of 1971, where 475 centimetres (15.5 feet) fell.
Record-breaking or not, scientists agree this is an unusually bad winter. February saw unseasonably cold temperatures, which has kept much of the accumulation on the ground.
“We have these cold arctic air masses coming from northern Canada colliding essentially with the warm air masses of the ocean and this is always going to make Halifax a stormy place,” said Ian Folkins, an associate professor at Dalhousie University who teaches in the Physics and Atmospheric Science Department.
“But what makes this worse that usual is that contrast in air mass is more extreme than usual.”
Spring does officially start on Friday, but don’t get too excited yet — meteorologists are keeping an eye on another system that could hit the region on the weekend.
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