Winter Southern Manitoba – Winnipeg Free Press

The “winter that never happened” hit southern Manitoba with a vengeance on Thursday.

A pile of snow, sleet and rain knocked out power to thousands of Manitoba Hydro customers and made roads very slippery as it hit a low-lying area in Colorado.

After an unseasonable rain shower in Winnipeg on Thursday morning, temperatures cooled and the sleet turned to snow. The change in weather brought two to five centimeters of the white stuff, said Justin Shelley, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“It's been a very warm winter, so that's allowed some parts of the province to have these conditions,” Shelley said.

Ice build-up on power lines and high winds knocked out service for more than 6,000 Hydro customers across the province, media officer Riley MacDonald said.

In Winnipeg, 250 customers were affected, most of them in the Crestview neighborhood, and most of the outages were in rural areas.

Freezing rain turned roads and highways into ice, causing crashes in Winnipeg and outside the Perimeter Highway.

Outside the city, a school bus and a car collided on Highway 59 near Ile des Chenes, south of the city.

St. Pierre-Jolis RCMP said none of the nine students on the bus or its driver were injured. The driver was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

Headingley Fire Chief John Sparham said Thursday afternoon crews responded to three vehicles in potholes on the Trans-Canada Highway within 40 minutes.

“Just rain on ice,” he said.

All provincial roads and highways remained open Thursday night, but there were icy conditions, according to Manitoba Transport and Infrastructure.

So far this month, daily highs have been above freezing. Normal daytime temperatures for this time of year are between -8 C and -10 C, Shelley said.

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Nicole Buffy
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffy is a multimedia producer reporting to the Free Press city office.

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