A dry Halloween

An AP photo of the Halloween snowstorm this past weekend.

Below: thousands of trees fell on cars and power lines

across New England.

Happy Halloween everyone, expect partly cloudy skies for trick or treating tonight in Montreal, with temperatures around 5C. We are looking at a dry week until Thursday with temperatures right around normal for the start of November.

That was one scary storm this past weekend, as portions of the east coast from Newfoundland to New Jersey were hammered by 100km/h winds and a record breaking 1 to 2 feet of heavy wet snow. The hardest hit areas stretched from Northwest New Jersey into Connecticut, western Massachusetts, southern Vermont and New Hampshire where as much as 30 inches of snow fell. The snow brought down a tremendous amount of trees onto houses, power lines and cars. Extra hydro crews are scrambling into the region today to restore power to more than 2.5 million homes. As impressive as that amount is, it is down from nearly 4 million at the height of the storm. Over 800,000 lost power in Connecticut alone shattering the record just set by Hurricane Irene this summer. Some of the more impressive numbers included 32 inches of snow at Peru, Mass, and a 133km/h wind gust at Grand Etang, Newfoundland. Even Metro NYC got in on the act with over 2 inches of snow in Central Park, the most in October since the days of the Civil War! Eight deaths are being blamed on the storm and damage estimates will run into the hundreds of millions. The clean up is underway on this Halloween Monday, and will be helped by much warmer air in the region this week, but it could take up to a week to connect the power in the hardest hit areas.

Locally we had just some cloud cover and gusty winds in Montreal from the storm as the system passed too far south. You had to go south of Burlington before you encountered the snow. Accumulations in Vermont ranged from a trace at Burlington to nearly 10 inches in southern Vermont along the Mass border.