March snowstorm hits Manitoba, leads to power outages

A low-pressure system swept through much of Manitoba on the weekend, leading to a March snowstorm that touched on Winnipeg but hit the Westman area the hardest, Environment and Climate Change Canada says.

Meteorologist Eric Dykes told 680 CJOB’s The Start that the system, which was headed to the northern Interlake and elsewhere in northeastern Manitoba by Monday morning, led to about six centimetres of snow in the Manitoba capital, with areas south of Virden seeing 25 centimetres and Brandon getting hammered with 29 centimetres.

And those might not be the province’s highest snowfall areas, as numbers continue to come in.

“No doubt, there’s likely heavier or larger amounts of snow north of Dauphin and in the Riding Mountain (area) where the higher terrain is located,” Dykes said.

Luckily, however, that’s about all the elements intend to drop on the region for now.

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“We’re going to be getting into a clearing patch now — a little bit cooler temperatures as we get into tonight and into tomorrow as well,” Dykes said Monday.

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“Just a little bit of flurry activity on Wednesday, … nothing to worry about there.”

Dykes said there could be a centimetre or two of snow on Thursday in Winnipeg, before getting back to seasonal temperatures by the weekend.

The weekend’s conditions included freezing rain in Winnipeg, which Manitoba Hydro says kept its crews busy tackling a handful of scattered outages.

Hydro’s Bruce Owen told The Start the areas that were hit the hardest included Charleswood, Crestview and St. James, but most customers had been restored by Monday morning.

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“With the flickering lights, ice clinging to power lines, power lines bouncing around, … we had several pole fires, some transformers going, some underground faults. … We had a mixed bag, and it came all at once,” he said.

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First major blast of winter

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