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One of the northern-most communities in the Northwest Territories is enduring its third blizzard in about two weeks, and with Christmas just hours away, residents are being greeted by mostly bare shelves in one of the community’s few stores.<\/p>\n
Apart from empty shelves, residents of the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk also have to contend with rationing water, and Christmas mail being held up because of blizzards beating down on the area.<\/p>\n
Mayor Erwin Elias said the ice road has been opening and closing, depending on the vagaries of the weather.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing anybody can do,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with Mother Nature.\u201d <\/p>\n
But he added that it was \u201ctrying times\u201d for the hamlet.<\/p>\n
With Christmas around the corner, Elias said store shelves have been almost stripped clean. Residents have even been asked to conserve water because trucks are unable to pass through the blizzards.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you have to preserve and ration some of the water because you never know how long the storms are going to last,\u201d Elias said. <\/p>\n
Christmas mail hasn’t reached community for a week<\/p>\n
Christmas mail and gifts haven\u2019t reached the community for about a week, Elias added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s definitely something that was unforeseen and unfortunate \u2026 we have to adapt to what’s happening at every level,\u201d he said. \u201cWhether it’s flooding in the community or highway closing, it’s something we’re always challenged with here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Environment Canada has issued a blizzard warning for Tuktoyaktuk with blowing snow expected on Christmas Day and a high of -18 C. It also warns that wind gusts will reach up to 60 kilometres per hour.<\/p>\n
Kurt Wainman, who owns Northwind Industries, which has the contract to clear the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk highway, said his crews had to pull back Wednesday morning because it wouldn\u2019t stop \u201csnowing and blowing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou couldn’t see anything in the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although crews managed to punch a hole through the snow earlier this week that allowed two trucks to pass through, Wainman said the weather \u201cgot too ugly too fast,\u201d putting a stop to vehicles. <\/p>\n
The blowing snow makes it dangerous because it is hard to see oncoming traffic, he noted.<\/p>\n
It would take the crew at least two weeks to clean up the width of the road and make it passable for two vehicles, Wainman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause there\u2019s that much snow. We have 20 and 30 foot (six to nine metre) banks in some areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elias, who travelled down south on Tuesday, said he managed to get back home via a narrow trail with high banks on either side, called a \u201cgoat trail.\u201d<\/p>\n
The weather \u2014 with snow piles \u2014 reminds Elias of his childhood days, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to have crazy big storms in the community where banks would be 20 to 30 feet (six to nine metres) high with snow and we’d have storms that would last a week,\u201d the mayor said. \u201cI haven’t seen that for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-368567","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\/368567","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=368567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}