Mix of snow, strong winds, and freezing rain closes Maritime schools

Many schools across the Maritimes are closed Monday following a mix of snow, freezing rain, and high winds that began in the region Sunday morning.

Weather alerts

Yellow wind warnings are in place for Pictou and Antigonish counties in Nova Scotia as well as southern Cape Breton.

Environment Canada says westerly wind gusts of up to 90 km/h are expected from Monday morning until the evening.

The warning says local power outages are possible and high-sided vehicles will be pushed around by the wind.

Yellow winter storm warnings are also in place for parts of Inverness County and Victoria County in Cape Breton.

Up to 20 cm of snow and westerly wind gusts of up to 100 km/h is expected before easing in the evening.

“Rain will change to snow this morning and continue most of today. Very strong westerly winds will also develop this morning and will combine to give poor visibility in blowing snow,” the warning reads.

“Visibility will likely be suddenly reduced to near zero at times. Prepare for quickly changing and deteriorating travel conditions.”

Meanwhile, on Prince Edward Island, a wind warning is in place for Kings County. West and northwesterly winds of up to 90 km/h are in the forecast.

Snowfall warnings that were previously in place for New Brunswick have ended.

School closures

Schools in northern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are closed while many schools on P.E.I. are opening on a one-hour delay.

A full list can be found here.

Other closures

All provincial civil service offices in the West Prince area of P.E.I. are on a further delayed opening until 10:30 a.m.

Some Health PEI appointments are cancelled.

Power

At one point in the day, there were more than 6,100 Nova Scotia Power customers without electricity. As of 5 p.m., that number has dropped to 799 affected customers.

There were four Maritime Electric customers without power at that time and one outage impacting three customers in New Brunswick.

Travel

Flights arriving at Halifax Stanfield from St. John’s are either delayed or cancelled.

Marine Atlantic has cancelled the following sailings for Monday due to the weather:

• The 11:15 p.m. crossing from North Sydney, N.S., to Port aux Basques, N.L.
• The 11:30 p.m. crossing from Port aux Basques to North Sydney

The following sailings of Fundy Rose are also cancelled:

• The 9 a.m. Saint John, N.B., departure
• The 4 p.m. Digby, N.S., departure

The Tancook Ferry in Chester, N.S., was out of service for the morning. The 1:30 p.m., 3:40 p.m. sailings are also cancelled.