First Snowfall

Overnight from Friday November 21st to Saturday November 22nd we had our first snowfall of the year. There had been a few flakes which melted before landing previously but southwestern Nova Scotia had been spared the major storm which the northern and eastern parts had a couple of weeks ago.

This was a major snow event, coming up the Eastern Seaboard and dumping from 10-40 cm of snow on Nova Scotia, depending on where you were. It's pretty breezy at the top of our hill so we had some strange drifting (couldn't open the back door in the morning) but I would estimate our area got about 20 cm. It's now all gone - last night a strong warm east wind arrived and by this morning we only had enough on our whole acre to make about a 2 ft high snowman if we could have piled it all together and now even that is gone.

Nothing around here was canceled or delayed - of course it didn't come on a school day to affect busing but the Santa Parade in Shelburne went ahead. Farther up the coast around Bridgewater, they had 35 cm or more and it was nice to hear on the radio that many businesses (Bridgewater Mall, Gow's Home Hardware, TD Bank) closed until Saturday afternoon so that their employees were not forced to try and get to work for the few customers who might have been dumb enough to go shopping.

Town streets were plowed promptly, ours before we woke up in the morning and driving into Shelburne this week everything seemed well cleaned up. I hope that level of service is the norm for the rest of the winter. The previous storm (which didn't hit this far south) closed the Cobequid Pass overnight with accidents blocking the west-bound highway and 1500 cars were trapped, with their occupants until morning. It turned out that many of the province's snow contracts don't start until December 1st and there was no contingency plan for an emergency in the Pass. If you've driven through there, you'll know it's a singularly bleak area with nothing whatsoever (including any exits) for 30+ kilometers (not that there is anything anywhere in that part of the Trans-Canada) except the toll-booths in the middle. I wonder if the province had the nerve to charge a toll to the people who were trapped overnight.