Several Businesses, Services Closed; Residents Urged to Avoid Non-Essential Travel as Metro Digs Out
The City of St. John’s has not declared a State of Emergency but it has closed all municipal offices as crews continue snow clearing efforts following several days of heavy snowfall.
City hall and all recreation facilities will be closed, with staff working from home where possible. Residents are being urged to limit travel to essential trips only to give crews space to operate safely.
All provincial government buildings in the greater St. John’s area are closed for the day.
Memorial University, College of the North Atlantic, and the Marine Institute are not going to open today.
Schools in the K-12 system already have today off for winter break.
Metrobus and GoBus will be parked at least for the morning.
The weather-related parking ban remains in effect outside the downtown area, and there will be no garbage collection today.
The city says a State of Emergency is not being declared at this time but it is continuing to monitor conditions closely.
(VOCM News)
It just kept snowing…and snowing on the weekend, as another low pressure system stubbornly hung on…adding another 55 cm of snow to the several feet already blanketing the eastern portion of the island.
The latest snowfall all but shut down much of the Avalon Peninsula yesterday, interfering with the transportation network on all fronts and leaving many vehicles stranded on the highway.
Wanda Batten, a meteorologist at the Gander Weather Office, knew there was a lot of uncertainty with the system as it was off the ocean.
“These ones are very difficult to forecast because we don’t have any upstream data to go by. It seems this system tracked a little closer to the Avalon than anticipated so the snowfall amounts were higher than expected,” says Batten.
It makes this one of the snowiest February on record.
