Wind driven snow in Montreal

L'Ile Perrot public workers clearing off some of the snow and ice Saturday afternoon. (ValleyWX Pic)

The cold side of yesterday's storm finally arrived in Montreal today with the mercury falling from around 1C early this morning to where it sits now at -6C. Add to that a biting northwest wind that has been in the 50km/h range all day and a few centimetres of snow, and it has been nasty. With windchill values in the minus teens, this was quite a change from the mild, but stormy day we had on Friday. The storm passed almost over Montreal with a very low barometric pressure of 979mb here at my house on L'Ile Perrot. We were just on the warm side with about 25mm of rain and 5-10cm (2-4 inches) of snow before the rain. Meanwhile not far west and north it was quite a different story with heavy wet snow in Ottawa accumulating up to 35cm (14 inches). Across the Laurentians between 40 and 50cm (16-20 inches) fell. Today strong northwest winds are blowing around the snow across the entire region with travel being difficult in many places. Roads have been snow covered and visibility was less than 1 kilometre at times. The winds and snow will abate this evening with clouds remaining and cold lows down to -15C. Sunday will be cloudy and cool with some light now and highs of only -7C

Over 40cm of snow fell in the Laurentians knocking down power lines. (CJAD.com photo).

The heavy wet snow yesterday knocked out power to thousands of homes in the Ottawa Valley on both the Ontario and Quebec side. Crews from Hydro One, Ottawa Hydro and Hydro Quebec have been working around the clock to get power and the heat back on. Nearly 100,000 were without power yesterday and into today. The cold is with us all week with another chance for snow by Wednesday afternoon. More on that system as the week moves along. Tomorrow and Monday will be much better travel days.