It’s been a long eventful 24 hours with a major snowstorm blasting the area.
Environment Canada’s Ryan Rozinskis tells us the storm hit much as expected.
He explains we got hit with 32 centimetres all of yesterday from that powerful Colorado Low as did much of the north shore communities from Nipigon to Marathon.
The meteorologist explains temperatures are expected to plummet for the weekend along with more snow due here Saturday night into Sunday, but not as much snow is expected with that event.
Power is out for 2,500 customers with Hydro One. It was hoped that power could be restored by 11 pm tonight, however, some may not have electricity back until tomorrow.
You can get updates through their outage map on the Internet.
Thunder Bay Hydro meantime, has been working to restore numerous power outages in the city from last night.
While there are still some small pockets which still don’t have electricity, the outage map shows much of the city is back online. Officials tell us the pockets still without power should have full service restored by this afternoon.
Roads Manager Brad Adams tells us they have main roads clear and they are plowing at least one side of all residential streets by the end of today. Main sidewalks won’t be cleared until Monday and residential sidewalks could take up until January 3rd or 4th to be fully cleared.
As for collisions, local police tell us nothing to report, same with a check of provincial police website.
If you need to travel on area highways, the Ministry of Transportation continues to have plows out this afternoon.
The MTO is forecasting driving conditions to be good to fair with mostly snow covered sections and some with just partial cover.
As for the Thunder Bay airport, several noon hour flights are delayed for both arrivals and departures.
Meanwhile, The snowstorm has forced the City to cancel garbage and recycling pick up for today.
Anyone who was supposed to have their garbage picked up today is asked to put their garbage out this Sunday.
Any recycling not picked up will be collected on the next scheduled recycling day.
All other collection dates for next week remain unchanged.
Finally, Thunder Bay Fire and Rescue say they are experiencing delays in response time due to the high call volume they are experiencing over the past 24 hours.
They say they’ve been busy with an unusually high volume of calls related to power line hazards due to the heavy weight of ice and snow bearing down on hydro lines and poles.
Officials note the heavy snow on residential streets and icy conditions also caused them delays.
