Montreal readies for another winter storm

The city of Montreal continues its snow-removal operations as another winter storm looms – expected to begin overnight and bring 15 to 20 centimetres of snow, strong winds and local blowing snow over the area.

Environment Canada issuing a snowfall warning. They say it should end late in the day on Saturday, “but a brief period of freezing rain is possible in the afternoon.”

Temperatures could reach a high of plus 1 on Saturday and then dip to minus 2 come Sunday.

As of Friday morning, on average, 37 per cent of snow removal operations have been completed across all boroughs from Sunday and Tuesday’s storms. You can track progress through the city of Montreal’s website.

Environment Canada warns that rapidly accumulating snow could make travel difficult over some locations. “Be prepared to adjust your driving with changing road conditions.”

“It’s going to start up around the midnight hours. It’ll get heavy. We’re expecting it to continue on throughout the overnight period before, you know, pushing to the Quebec city area,” said Stella Acquisto, weather specialist at CityNews. But adds that for many regions like Montreal, “throughout the afternoon tomorrow, what we are expecting is a transition from that snowfall into rain. And that’s where it becomes quite dangerous too, because in addition to the higher amounts of snowfall we’re seeing, when we make that transition into rainfall, that’s where we can see freezing rain. We can see ice pellets. So very messy conditions. On top of all of this, that storm is also bringing us some strong gusty winds up to 80 kilometers per hour. So 60 to 80 kilometer per hour gusts.”

The City of Montreal says it has 3,000 employees out now on snow loading operations. “When we will reach 2.5 centimetres later on tonight, we will have to pause the loading operation to concentrate our efforts on the clearing operation,” said Philippe Sabourin, spokesperson for the city. “To do so we will need 1,000 employees during the weekend to complete the clearing operation. We’ll be back with the loading operation…and if there is a ‘no parking’ sign – you must obey.”

“I think it was not even yesterday. It was the day before and then it was raining and then after the rain, then it got cold. And now we think we got over it and it’s going to snow again. It’s quite a lot, but there’s nothing we could do about it,” said one Montrealer about the impending new storm.

“Thinking that everything will be horrible just because of the snowstorm is just deceiving yourself,” said another.

Forecast ahead

“It does look like we’re setting up for snow once again on Tuesday next week. We can see periods of snow throughout the day. Will it be like today? Well, it’s really hard to tell just yet, but that is something that we’re tracking,” said Acquisto.

Mix of sun and clouds in the forecast for Monday, and minus 5 degeres.

Periods of snow on Tuesday and into the evening.

A 60 per cent chance of flurries on Wednesday, before the sun returns on Thursday – and temperatures steady around minus 9 for both days.