Winnipeg blizzard: Schools closed, trash pickup suspended as storm sweeps through southern Manitoba<\/a><\/p>\nThiessen drove to Winnipeg Richardson International Airport from outside of Steinbach to make it on time for the morning flight. The departure time was long gone at 8 a.m.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an absolute gong show,\u201d she recounted. \u201cThere were people upon people. So we\u2019re waiting in line, slowly moving through for about three hours, not knowing what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
A winter storm system blew across the province on Thursday, forcing school and road closures.<\/p>\n
Portions of southern Manitoba received up to 20 centimetres of snow and northerly wind gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour.<\/p>\n
Travel was deemed \u201cdangerous and likely impossible\u201d due to near-zero visibility, and residents were advised to avoid travel and outdoor activities.<\/p>\n
Blowing snow and gusty winds tapered off later in the day.<\/p>\n
CityNews reached out to the Winnipeg airport authority but did not immediately hear back.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome flights have been cancelled or delayed due to weather,\u201d Winnipeg Richardson International Airport wrote on social media. \u201cCheck your flight status before coming to the airport. Do not come to YWG if your flight has been cancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many travellers, Thursday morning began with a lengthy commute.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat taxi was two hours late,\u201d said Donald Warkentin. \u201cMy flight was to leave at 11 o\u2019clock this morning. And it was cancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flight cancellations left some travellers with confusing reservations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, they re-booked us,\u201d said Sandra Grevstad. \u201cWe were going to Windsor, Ontario. They re-booked us on the flight from Toronto to Windsor tonight, but from Winnipeg to Toronto tomorrow. So that wasn\u2019t going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most travellers with international destinations who spoke to CityNews were scheduled to fly from Winnipeg as early as Friday morning.<\/p>\n
But other travellers were forced to look for overnight accommodations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are placing ourselves in a hotel,\u201d said out-of-towner Denis Hill. \u201cAnother thing is, because of the weather there is no compensation for rooms, no compensation for meals. Which is OK. It happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hours of waiting and uncertainty during the busiest travel season of the year. That\u2019s the result of blizzard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-355263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}