A storm on Groundhog Day pretty much shut down Greater Moncton.
Snow, combined with high winds forced Codiac Transpo buses off the roads due to zero visibility.
Schools closed, and municipal offices shut down their operations as well for the day.
All schools in Anglophone East, Francophone South(except Saint John and Quispamsis) and Anglophone North are closed again today, due to road conditions.
Environment Canada Meteorologist Spencer Clements says, “The Moncton region got around 20 centimetres of snow, followed by a period of ice pellets, which wasn’t measured. Then some rainfall amounts, they were 23 millimetres at the Greater Moncton Airport.”
He says the hardest hit areas vary, depending on the type of precipitation, “For rainfall, it was definitely Saint John. They reported almost 30 millimetres of rain. For snowfall, it would have been from Moncton, northward and westward through Central New Brunswick where we averaged 15 to 20 centimetres. The storm is still ongoing in the north, so we don’t know the totals there yet.”
Clements says this type of storm isn’t uncommon, but it is somewhat unusual, “This time of year, or last week of January and first week of February, are climatologically the coldest every year across the Maritimes. So if there was a time that it would be least likely to happen, it would be usually be this time of year.”
