A spring storm delivered an unwelcome blanket of snow to the Toronto area, creating hazardous driving conditions and sending residents hunting for shovels.
The storm dumped 10 centimetres of snow in Toronto on Sunday alone, making it the snowiest day of the entire winter and representing more snow than fell in all of December or January. An additional three cm arrived before the storm tapered off on Monday morning.
The wintry weather, which is heading east to Nova Scotia, snarled the morning commute in the Greater Toronto Area, where there have been more than 850 collisions since 5 p.m. on Sunday, according to police.
The city of Toronto issued an extreme-cold weather alert, warning of the risk of frostbite and urging residents to check on vulnerable family members or neighbours. It also added services for homeless people.
The storm seemed especially out of place after Toronto's unseasonably mild winter – which was the warmest in almost 80 years of record-keeping and which had, up until this weekend, the second-least amount of snowfall, according to David Phillips, Environment Canada senior climatologist.
"What's really shocking people is … we had no winter," he said. "We've already had temperatures in Toronto in March of 20 degrees plus. We've had a tornado in Southern Ontario. People were of the mind that we've had our spring in March and now we were going to get summer in April, you see, and not this return of something that reminded you of the dead of winter."
However, Mr. Phillips notes that snow is part of the normal weather pattern for April in Toronto, which averages three days with snow and total amounts of five cm. The last time 10 cm of snow fell in Toronto on an April day was on April 6, 1994, when there was 10.4 cm.
The storm comes as temperatures in the Toronto area are about 10 C below average – a sharp contrast to recent record warm weather in other parts of Canada. In the past few days, residents of Alberta and the Yukon have enjoyed temperatures in the high teens, Mr. Phillips said.
But the good news is that spring weather is inching ever closer. "This may be winter's last hurrah," Mr. Phillips said. "The further you go out into April, the more difficult it is for the cold air to return."
Jill Mahoney