Interior highways receive more than 40 centimetres of snow

Some B.C. interior mountain passes received more than 40 centimetres of snowfall over a 24 hour period as a storm front swept across the region.

Allison Pass, a highway summit along the Crowsnest Highway between Hope and Princeton, recorded the most snowfall at 44 centimetres.

The Pennask Summit along the Okanagan Connector between Merritt and Peachland saw 42 centimetres of snowfall.

The Surrey Lake Summit, which is the highest point on the Coquihalla highway between Merritt and Kamloops, received 42 centimeters of snowfall.

The Coquihalla summit received the least snowfall of the interior mountain passes at 25 centimetres of snow.

It was all hands on deck for the VSA highway maintenance crew, responsible for maintaining the highways in the Merritt area.

Spokesperson Bob Gilowski said on Wednesday that the worst is over.

“All of our roads are all compacted with our maintenance vehicles starting to chip away at that snowfall,” he said.

He said the storm brought significant snowfall to the interior mountain passes.

“It’s not our most severe, we’ve had more snowfall in a 24 [to] 36 hour period, but a 40 centimetre snowfall is definitely heavy.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "It's not our most severe, we've had more snowfall in a 24 [to] 36 hour period, but a 40 centimetre snowfall is definitely heavy."

He said there is good news for holiday travellers as there is no significant snowfall event forecast for the near future.

“Looking ahead into Friday and Saturday, it will still remain dry but cold. It is going to busy on Friday and Saturday as people leave to their Christmas destinations. We are expecting a large volume of traffic to come through this corridor, but those people that are using the Coquihalla corridor can definitely expect winter driving conditions,” Gilowski said.