Blast of winter weather grips Ottawa with 15 cm of snow

The capital region woke up to a fresh blanket of snow making for a messy spring commute for many driving and taking transit. CTV’s Tyler Fleming reports.

A wintry blast coated Ottawa in white Tuesday.

Environment Canada says 15 centimetres of snow was recorded at the Ottawa Airport as of 2 p.m.

A snowfall warning that was issued on Monday was called off by the late afternoon as the snow began to taper off.

Temperatures hit -4 C Tuesday with a wind chill of -12. Environment Canada had forecasted wind gusts of up to 50 km/h, causing some of the snow to blow around.

• RELATED: Ottawa police deal with dozens of collisions on snowy roads

Ottawa police are warning of snow-covered and slippery roads. Drivers are being asked to slow down and to increase stopping distances.

Police reported to dozens of collisions on the roads this morning.

Hydro Ottawa reported outages affecting more than 5,000 customers in the city’s northwest Tuesday morning, knocking out traffic lights at many intersections.

“Crews continue to work on-site due to inclement weather that caused the outage impacting residents in Kanata North, West Carleton-March and Bay. We thank you for your patience as we work to restore power as quickly and safely as possible,” Hydro Ottawa said on social media just after 8:30 a.m.

By 12 p.m., power remained out to about 800 customers, with a note saying restoration efforts are delayed.

Hydro Ottawa blamed a downed wire for the outage.

City roads manager Bryden Denyes says with colder weather lingering over the next couple of days, crews will remain focused on clearing and treating icy road conditions.

“We’re dealing with a late season storm in between us trying to manage, spring cleanup but, we have the ability to transition back and forth between events,” Denyes said.

“We saw this storm coming, we were prepared for it. We’re dealing with a varying degree of snowfall across the city, a little bit more snow in the west-end and the south-end versus the east end. Our main focus is really on our priority road network and our sidewalks, and we’ll see how we go, but one big factor in this storm is we are dealing with a lot of wind, causing a lot of whiteout conditions and drifting snow.”

A chance of flurries is expected in the evening hours Tuesday and end before midnight. Overnight, expect a low of -9 C and a wind chill of -14.

Wednesday’s forecast is mainly cloudy with a 40 per cent chance of flurries and a high of 2 C.

Thursday could see a chance of rain or flurries and a high of 5 C.

Clouds with a chance of showers is in the forecast for Friday.

With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Tyler Fleming