White Juan
White Juan was the name given to a storm that hit Atlantic Canada in 2004. Some places received as much as 101.2 cm (or 4 feet) in snow. Blowing snow created situations where people couldn't get out of their houses and had to be dug out. A state of emergency was declared and curfew to allow for snow removal. In hard hit areas, communities were shut down for days. In some places even weeks. There was so much snow, they started to run out of places to put it and had to get special permission to dump it into the Ocean.
Snow fell at a phenomenal rate of five centimetres per hour for 12 straight hours. Blowing snow and high winds maintained blizzard conditions for a day or more and created monstrous drifts as tall as three metres. Halifax, Yarmouth and Charlottetown broke all-time 24-hour snowfall records, receiving almost a metre of snow. For Halifax, the 88.5 cm of snow on February 19 nearly doubled its previous record for a single day. More significantly, with over 300,000 people, it is now likely the largest city in the world to ever receive such a dump of snow in one day. The storm lasted for 3 days straight.
Streets were deserted for days. Huge drifts reduced four-lane boulevards to narrow walking paths. The Confederation Bridge was closed to all traffic for only the second time ever. The volume and density of the snow was so heavily packed that plows hit mounds of snow and literally bounced back. It took almost a week before bus and ferry service resumed and schools re-opened, leaving students with a record year for the number for lost days due to weather. There were no serious injuries or deaths. White juan costed an estimated 2.7 million dollars to clean up.
Snow fell at a phenomenal rate of five centimetres per hour for 12 straight hours. Blowing snow and high winds maintained blizzard conditions for a day or more and created monstrous drifts as tall as three metres. Halifax, Yarmouth and Charlottetown broke all-time 24-hour snowfall records, receiving almost a metre of snow. For Halifax, the 88.5 cm of snow on February 19 nearly doubled its previous record for a single day. More significantly, with over 300,000 people, it is now likely the largest city in the world to ever receive such a dump of snow in one day. The storm lasted for 3 days straight.
Streets were deserted for days. Huge drifts reduced four-lane boulevards to narrow walking paths. The Confederation Bridge was closed to all traffic for only the second time ever. The volume and density of the snow was so heavily packed that plows hit mounds of snow and literally bounced back. It took almost a week before bus and ferry service resumed and schools re-opened, leaving students with a record year for the number for lost days due to weather. There were no serious injuries or deaths. White juan costed an estimated 2.7 million dollars to clean up.