The first snowfall of the season transformed Ottawa into a winter wonderland over the weekend, but don’t expect the snow to stick around just yet.
Above-zero temperatures and rainfall
are in the forecast, and are expected to melt away the snow this week, according to climatologist David Phillips.
“This is not your white Christmas snowfall,” Phillips said. “Don’t wax your skis, because you’re not going to ski on this kind of snow.”
Approximately 11.7 cm of snow hit the ground on Sunday at the Ottawa International Airport amid the city’s
first snowfall warning of the season
, setting a record for the snowiest Nov. 9 in the city’s history. The previous record dated back to 1897, when 10.2 cm of snow fell on this day.
However, there’s “nothing magical about the calendar date of Nov. 9,” Phillips said, noting the city has previously seen much higher snowfall levels earlier in the year.
Pointing to previous record-high years, 29.2 cm of snow fell at the Ottawa airport on Oct. 2, 1988, Phillips said, and 25.6 cm of snow hit the ground on Nov. 4, 1993.
“I never get excited about daily records, because you look at a day and you think, ‘Oh my gosh, you’ve never seen this snowfall,’ but then you look at the day after or the day before, and you probably break that record,” Phillips said.
In fact, the Nov. 9 snowfall is more or less on par with when Ottawa expects to get its first snowfall of the season, Phillips said. He noted last winter as an exception, when the first measurable snowfall didn’t hit the ground until Dec. 1.
What made Sunday’s snowfall particularly challenging was the accompanying winds gusting up to 30 km/h. While up to 24 km of visibility is expected on a clear day at the Ottawa airport, Phillips said the combination of wind and snow brought visibility down to less than a kilometre on Sunday night.
Ontario Provincial Police said they responded to
more than 120 collisions between 12 and 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon,
19 of which happened in Ottawa. Most collisions involved cars and trucks sliding off the road, OPP said in a social media post.
OPP also encouraged drivers to ensure their vehicles were winter-ready and
posted a photo of a vehicle with iced-over tires
, which police said “resulted in the driver losing control in the snowy weather.”
The City of Ottawa said snow-clearing crews are on the road and will continue to clear and treat sidewalks, roads, bus routes and the winter cycling network. They will also make their way into residential neighbourhoods to treat slippery conditions.
“As a reminder, this is our first deployment of the season, and it will take crews longer to get through the entire transportation network. Operators are settling into their newly assigned routes, adapting to conditions while remaining mindful that the ground is still soft and taking care to avoid damaging lawns,” the city wrote on its
website
.
Meanwhile, the city’s traffic services department said it had removed about 71 per cent of flex stakes and delineators across the city and aims to complete the removal work by mid-next week.
