Car Freezes To Driveway As Cold Spell Finally Ready To Break Tuesday March 3, 2009
CityNews.ca Staff
Here are the three words you've been waiting to hear about the brutal cold snap we've been enduring for the last five days: it's almost over.
The GTA woke up to the coldest morning yet Tuesday, with temperatures of -15C and wind chills around -24. The day's sunshine won't give way to much warmth, with a high of -5C feeling more like -12 and cold northwest winds.
But those breezes will start to shift around to the south by Wednesday and the high pressure system that's been drawing in this Arctic air will finally move out, bringing in temperatures well above normal.
By the end of the week, we could be into double digits and well above the norm of 2C.
It can't come soon enough for one GTA family. A water main break - another frequent problem in these conditions - led to an incredible scene in a Scarborough driveway. As the liquid poured out onto the pavement, it trickled onto a driveway on Cliffcrest Crescent in the Highway 2 and Midland Ave. area.
When the surprised tenant came outside in the morning, she was in for a huge surprise. The tires of the vehicle had frozen to the driveway and the rest of the surface was a sheet of ice, imprisoning the car where it sat.
The owner has no idea what's happened to his wheels - he's on vacation in Jamaica and his family hasn't told him about yet. Fortunately, the water didn't get into the basement, which would have made things far worse.
The problem should clear up in the next few days, as the winds shift to the south, bringing in much warmer air and with it, the promise of more spring-like temperatures.
And there's another change coming: all that sun will be replaced by cloud and we could see showers right through to Sunday. But it's a small price to pay for temperatures of 6C on Thursday, 9C or higher on Friday and just a few degrees under that for the weekend.
The cold spell prompted the ninth Extreme Cold Weather Alert of the year, which will be lifted by Wednesday. But as bitter as it's been, we've been extremely lucky. That high pressure system that caused it also helped keep one of the worst storms of the season from hitting Ontario.
Residents along the U.S. East Coast are still digging out from a huge dumping of early March snow, with between 20 and 30 centimetres down in places like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Ice accretions added to the misery in some areas and thousands are without power and heat in the bitter cold as crews work around the clock to try and repair the damage.
Raleigh, North Carolina got just over 7 cm of snow. That's not a huge amount until you consider that city's history. The record snowfall in March has only gone above that mark 11 times in 122 years.
In parts of New York State, the snow drifts whipped by high winds measured an incredible 60 cm high.
The disturbance is blamed for more than 350 accidents in New Jersey alone and another 50 in Maryland.
Schools were closed in numerous states, and in New York City, it was the first time in five years that all 1.1 million students got the day off from classes.
The storm played havoc with flights at airports across the country, leaving hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded. Some 950 planes were grounded at the big three airports in the New York City area alone, and about 300 more went nowhere in Philadelphia. Boston's busy Logan hub also cancelled hundreds of scheduled trips.
Things are only now starting to get back to normal, but you may still want to check the arrival and departure information at Pearson International to be sure your plane is on time.
There's no way of knowing if this is the last big storm of the winter, but the good news for us and for those down south is conditions are going to be improving this week. We'll get a much needed taste of spring in the coming days, a weather flavour we haven't been able to sample for a long time.
And with any luck, it will become a permanent part of our meteorological menu.
