Another Snow Bomb: Atlantic Canada Buried In Up To Five Feet Of Snow

A person walks between a barn and
an immense snow drift in 
Albert Bridge, Nova Scotia

The other day, I told Vermonters in this post that if they're starved for snow, they should go to Anchorage, Alaska. 

It turns out you don't need to go that far.  

Parts of Atlantic Canada, especially areas of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are absolutely buried in snow, thanks to a three-day storm last week. 

The worst of it was in eastern Nova Scotia in and near Cape Breton Island a whopping three to five feet of snow fell.  

At one Cape Breton apartment complex, a combination of accumulating snow and more snow falling off the roof piled up against ground floor apartment windows. The pressure then smashed the windows in, filling apartments with snow. 

Residents of the complex shoveled snow away from windows that had not yet broken and installed plywood where windows did break. 

The storm finally tapered off yesterday, but crews are struggling to clear the sometimes waist deep, heavy snow from streets and highways.  Gusty winds today will cause blowing and drifting snow, which will undoubtedly hinder the effort. 

People were warned to stay out of barns and other unstable structures because roofs could collapsed. Many homeowners were shoveling snow off of roofs, fearing the weight of it all could damage the houses. 

The Atlantic Canada storm was part of the Omega block weather pattern I told you about last week.  In this situation, intense storms lingered near California and near the southeastern coast of Canada. In between these two extremes, over central North America, a northward bulge in the jet stream created calm conditions and in many cases, near record high temperatures. 

As CBC reported:

"'Typically, low pressure systems follow the jet stream and move through the region west to east,' explained (CBC meteorologist Ryan )Snodden.

'This storm was a cut-off low, which is disconnected from the jet stream, and as a result it stalled east of the region, causing the prolonged snowfall.'"

The storm is finally slowly moving away. Some minor thawing is expected in much of the area hardest hit by the snow, with temperatures falling back below freezing next week.  No more immense storms are in the cards for the next several days.  

Videos:

News report on the incredible snow from Global New. Click on this link to view, or if you see the the image below, click on that:

A folksy news report from CBC gives the perspective on one street. Again, click on this link or if you see image below click on that. 

I'm a little scared for the 82-year-old dude in this video trying to clear his driveway. Don't want him to have any kind of heart attack. Once again, click on this link to view or if you see image below use that: 

Saving the best video for last. The dude who shoveled the snow in the photo on this post and his wife get interviewed by CBC. Romantic couple, and they guy says he will have "rock solid abs" after spending nine hours shoveling.  This is SUCH a Canadian couple. The snow falling off the roof and onto his head during the interview is a nice touch.

Again, click on the this link to view, or if you see image below, click on that: