Albertans feel winter’s wrath

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With snow pouring from the sky and wind kicking it into a blinding mess, Marsh Duncanson spent Sunday afternoon at Bison Transport in Calgary doing something unusual in his 15 years of driving a truck. He sat and waited, after telling his bosses he didn't feel safe driving in the storm.

It meant forfeiting $225 for the nine-hour trip to Spokane, Wash. It may also have meant preserving his own life after furious weather dumped 10 to 20 centimetres on southern Alberta, accompanied by gusts of up to 80 kilometres an hour. Roads grew so perilous that RCMP eventually shut down parts of numerous highways in southern Alberta, while Calgary saw a raft of flight cancellations and an afternoon of bated breath as hockey fans waited to see if the Vancouver Canucks would make it to town for an evening game.

For Mr. Duncanson, the highway closings provided reassurance that he had made the right call. "I've never done this before in my life," he said. "But there's no load in the world that's better off in the ditch than it is on the highway."

In Calgary, police briefly shut down major streets as at least five electrical poles caught fire from short-circuits caused by the wet snow. Some 6,000 people went temporarily without power. Police and ambulances responded to scores of accidents while RCMP in the town of Oyen declared a local state of emergency; elsewhere, police warned it was too dangerous to tow ditched vehicles.

"Today was one of the days where I was real close to pulling everyone off the road because you couldn't see," said Wayde Collins, a Volker Stevin plow driver with 26 years of experience.

By Sunday afternoon, 60 flights in and out of Calgary had been cancelled, while others were hours late and some were diverted to Edmonton. At one point, a temporary runway closing sparked false fears that the Calgary airport had been shut down, on a day when Western weather woes joined with heavy rainfall on the East Coast.

"Actually, YYC is not our biggest issue today," said Westjet spokesman Robert Palmer. "The Maritimes, especially St John's, is much worse. That's where most of the cancellations are."

The Alberta storm came after a Pacific low delivered punishing "Pineapple Express" rainfall in British Columbia before heading east, pounding the mountains and then pummelling the Western Prairies. The fast-moving system was expected to hit Saskatchewan Sunday evening, said David Spence, CTV's Calgary meteorologist, who forecast a return to sunshine in Alberta Monday.

"We usually average just under 30 centimetres of snow in March. And we could get about half of that today," Mr. Spence said Sunday.

The snowfall was welcome at ski hills west of Calgary, making up for a relatively dry early 2013. Lake Louise reported 70 centimetres of fresh snow in the past week. Kicking Horse, near Golden, B.C., saw 43 centimetres in 48 hours. Nearer the U.S. border, Fernie entered March with a staggering 8.5 metres of cumulative snowfall, a record, with more falling Sunday at the rate of a centimetre an hour.

This was "one of those types of storm fronts that delivers epic, epic powder," said Matt Mosteller, vice-president of sales and marketing at Resorts of the Canadian Rockies.

Joy for skiers turned to angst for hockey fans as poor visibility in Calgary forced cancellation of a Vancouver Canucks flight Saturday evening. On Sunday, the team finally touched down in Calgary after 3:30 p.m., less than 21/2hours before game time. "We are here," the Canucks tweeted, next to a photo of players leaving the plane hunched against the swirling snow.

Yet for many in Alberta, the storm was nothing unusual. March is the province's snowiest month, and big downfalls are typical. At the Webster Ranch and Chimney Rock Bed And Breakfast south of Calgary, Tony and Debbie Webster had friends over for a meal, a blizzard tradition.

"You just make the best of it. If the power goes out, then you play crib," said Ms. Webster.

For ranchers, the snow provided needed moisture for grasslands that had grown dry enough to become a fire risk. It also served as a reminder that, by Prairie standards, it can be a lot worse. Mr. Webster paged through his Farmer's Almanac as proof. The record snowfall in the area, he pointed out, is a metre of snow in one day. And it didn't come in March. It fell June 29, 1963.