First dose of winter hits Waterloo Region

Snow squalls hit southern Ontario Southern Ontario has gotten its first snowfall of the season! Ashley Bacon has more on the preparations and cleanup.

Mother Nature has given Waterloo Region its first dose of snow, just in time for December, and even more could be coming our way.

“I was pretty excited for a snow day. It wasn’t that fun, shovelling, but I was prepared to shovel with gloves,” a Kitchener resident told CTV News on Monday as they cleared their driveway.

According to Environment Canada, a fast-moving system dropped enough snow on the region to impact some roads.

School buses for the Waterloo Catholic District School board and the Waterloo Region District School Board were cancelled Monday morning due to the weather conditions.

“We’ve taken a real dramatic shift into more winter-like conditions,” Geoff Colson, Environment Canada meteorologist, said.

Some areas of Waterloo Region have seen up to 14 centimetres of snow since Thursday as the system moved through the area. By comparison, however, the region got off lightly. Some people in cottage country north of Toronto are still digging out after receiving upwards of 140 centimetres of snow over the weekend. A state of emergency was declared for Gravenhurst, a town in the Muskoka area, after a true winter wallop.

Preparing for snowfall

As the first flakes started to fly in Waterloo Region, road crews were at the ready with over 4,000 tonnes of salt at their disposal.

They hit the road early to prepare for the region’s first snowfall of the season.

“We call it route familiarization,” explained David Pressey, Waterloo Region’s manager of transportation. “Before the snow falls, we have our staff go out in their trucks and complete their routes to ensure they know all of the roads as best as possible.”

The region expects to receive more snow than it did last year.

“Overall, it looks more like a traditional winter for the Kitchener-Waterloo area going forward,” Colson explained. “That means more in the way of snowfall. I think the last few days have been a really good reminder of how quickly conditions can change.”

As of Monday afternoon, the forecast showed a chance of more snow on Wednesday and Thursday.

For some though, the snow is a welcome arrival at this time of year.

“I have a wedding coming up in just a couple of weeks. It’d be great to have a lovely, fluffy snow wedding,” one person told CTV while they were shovelling their driveway. “Hopefully we can have a little bit of that winter where kids can go sledding and go skating and it’s a winter wonderland.”