“Due to winter road conditions, police are advising motorists not to travel.”
That was the message issued by Calgary police on Wednesday morning as an unexpected blast of heavy snow blanketed the city during the height of the morning rush hour, with many areas in the north part of the city reporting whiteout conditions as well as along Highway 1 around Airdrie.
The heavy snowfall also prompted Calgary police to take to social media to advise motorists to stay off the roads.
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Police and emergency crews responded to hundreds of accidents, with many motorists seemingly caught off guard by the spring snowfall.
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“I think the intensity is what really sets it off,” said Terri Lang, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.”We were getting three centimeters an hour at some point, which is a lot of snow and it was wet and heavy snow too, big big flakes, so it can really pile up really quickly.”
While Banff and other areas in the mountains were forecast to get up to 30 cm of snow, Calgary was originally forecast to not see much snow accumulation at all.
During the height of Wednesday’s storm the snow was reported to be falling at a rate of 3 to 5 cm per hour in some parts of Calgary.
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However, around 7 a.m., heavy snow was reported to be falling over a large part of the city north of Glenmore Trail, sending many vehicles into the ditch or crashing into each other and prompting Environment Canada to issue a snowfall advisory for Calgary.
Many trucks, buses and larger vehicles were also having problems navigating steep hills.
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Calgary police and paramedics responded to dozens of accidents Wednesday morning after many motorists were seemingly caught off guard by the sudden spring snowstorm.
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“As this snow falls, the traffic situation does appear to be falling apart a little bit,” said Global Calgary traffic and weather specialists, Leslie Horton.
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“At first we were thinking it wouldn’t stay on those roads, but they’ve just not been warm enough, so we’re starting to see it accumulate on the roads.”
CPS said officers responded to just 14 crashes between midnight and 8 a.m., but an additional 287 accidents between 8 a.m. and noon on Wednesday.
A dump truck sits in a pond after it failed to navigate a ramp at the intersection of Crowchild Trail and Stoney Trail northwest in Calgary.
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Jabier Abusdos, who is spending her first winter in Calgary, described the sudden change in the weather as “crazy.”
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“The couple of past days were so nice. After my shift I went to the food court and I saw outside it was snowing so hard. I was like what is going on? It’s the same day, you know — like, oh my God I’m so tired already because like I can’t deal with this anymore.”
“People keep telling me March is going to be so nice, but it’s annoying,” added Abusdos. “I’m still waiting for the nice weather. Yeah, it’s crazy.”
While the snow was piling up in the north part of the city, the weather was dramatically different in the south part of Calgary where many neighbourhoods had no snow or just some light flurries with mostly dry or wet conditions on the roads, with no snow accumulation.
“I tend to think of these things like it’s like a thunderstorm, but in the springtime it’s snowing, so instead of bringing heavy rains, it was bringing heavy snow,” said Lang. “And one of the things about these types of systems is they’re quite small geographically when you thing about it. The south end of the city barely saw anything, but the north end got absolutely hammered, so it’s a pretty small system and the weather models have a lot of trouble picking up on those.”
This photo of Deerfoot Trail at 130th Avenue Southwest, taken around 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, shows just how dramatically different the weather was from the north part of Calgary.
Source: City of Calgary
By the time the storm system moved out Wednesday afternoon, Lang said about 16 cm of snow had been recorded at the Calgary airport where dozens of flights were also delayed because of the weather.
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The storm also caused dozens of flight cancellations, prompting the Calgary airport authority to take to social media to advise passengers to check their flight status and leave lots of time to get to the airport.
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Lang said another storm system is forecast to move into the Calgary area overnight, with an additional five to eight centimetres of snow expected to fall by the time it ends Thursday morning.
“Most people don’t think about this but March actually, statistically, gets the the most amount of snow during the winter from November to April, so March is the snowiest month for Calgary,” said Lang. “So I think when people are out there — it’s 15 C last week, they’re doing the lawn, they were out in flip-flops — and all of a sudden, boom, here comes winter again. But keep that in mind, because the second snowiest (month) is April. So we still have a long way to go before we’re kind of out of the woods,” Land added.
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