Pincher Creek Voice: Winter returns with a vengeance

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Winter returns with a vengeance

Linda Vance photo

Winter returned with a vengeance this weekend. Environment Canada issued snowfall, extreme cold, and wind warnings for southern Alberta, and in fact almost all of Alberta was under a weather warning of some sort or another for much of the weekend and earlier, beginning November 27. Road conditions in Alberta, including this area, were poor to impassable.

Dorothy Smith
Gerry Smith photo

On November 29 the temperature as measured at Pincher Creek Municipal Airport was -32 C at 9:00 pm on Saturday, November 29. With wind chill that was a frosty - 42 C. The coldest wind chill of the weekend was -45, measured several hours later at 2:00 am on November 30.

Update: According to Environment Canada, -34.6 C was measured on Sunday November 30 at Pincher Creek Municipal Airport, breaking the old record for the date of -27.8 C measured in 1896. Grande Prairie and Edmonton also set new low temperature records for November 30.

Approximately 30-40 cm (updated info) of snow fell on Pincher Creek during the event, according to Environment Canada. Actual measurements here, albeit unscientific, suggest more than that.

Visibility on area roads was reported as 1 km or lower at several points, beginning November 28. On November 28 Pincher Creek Emergency Services (including Lundbreck Fire) responded to multiple highway incidents west of Lundbreck on Highway 3 involving vehicles that couldn't carry on eastward any further (click here for that story). An incident on Highway 22 on Sunday proved to be a vehicle in the ditch, not a collision.

Between November 27 and November 29 RCMP responded to more than 600 collisions across Alberta, approximately 50 of them involving injury.

Miniature schnauzer Holly
Heather Adams photo

Town of Pincher Creek Operations crews began clearing the snow at 4:00 am Saturday, and were seen to be still hard at it on Sunday evening. In Lundbreck the fire department spearheaded the effort to dig out the hamlet (click here for that story). Stories abound of countless citizens helping out in the MD and Town of Pincher Creek with shovels, tractors, snow blowers, plows, bobcats, hot chocolate, and willing backs.

Mona Low - I want to thank my neighbors for helping me shovel. Nice to have people like this around me.

Truck under there somewhere (Burmis area)
Beau Wallace photo

Beau Wallace (November 29) - We did get a dump of snow as promised! I think it might be the largest single dump we have had here at Burmis in 30 years. There is at least 22 inches (57cm) on the level all over the entire yard and the bottom 12 of that is packed much harder so it would have been deeper before it packed. I measured all across the yard while digging out to the fuel shed. The only problem is my hightop snow boots are only 14 inches high! I went out for a bit over 2 1/2 hours this morning and shoveled the deck and some of the sidewalk and a path over to my fuel shed for gas for the snow blower. I don’t like to keep the gas stored in the workshop at the house but I guess I should have filled the tank on the blower on Friday before the snow got here. I’ll know better next time as it was quite a workout digging all the way over to the fuel shed for it. It was –23 when we got up but did warm up to +16 for a while – back down to –18 now. I will go out tomorrow around 11am and try blowing some of it with the snow blower and see if I can get a better control of it. At the moment we are quite snowed in!

Gerry Smith photos November 26-30, 2014

Gerry Smith - I don't know what the opposite of "out and about" is! I worked on the driveway yesterday and will finish it today. We will be able to get out tomorrow (December 1). The grader arrived this morning before 8 am (thank you MD of Pincher Creek!)