January 17, 2020 Snowmaggedon Mega Blizzard (84 Photos)

Winter 2020 is rapidly shaping up to be one for the record books. This week forecasters gave warning that we could over 70cm snow this weekend which would be accompanied by extreme winds in an event lasting more than 24 hours.

For once they were dead on. Friday morning everything in the city shut down ahead of the storm, by 10:30am we already had severe white out conditions.

Sustained winds hit 107 km/h gusting to 160km/h in the afternoon! Coupled with heavy snow it was a literal white out for most of the day an absolute brute of a storm.

The big news from this event was that for the first time I can remember, Friday afternoon all snow clearing operations across the region ceased. This meant highways, roadways, streets and cul-de-sacs filled in and drifted like never before! This would lead to a monumental effort required by all snow clearing crews, private, municipal and provincial, once operations resumed Saturday morning. Because of this most municipalities in the Metro region declared a State of Emergency (S.O.E.) where ALL business's had to close and ALL vehicles were ordered off the road so snow clearing operations would not be impeded the following day.

The storm lasted all day and all night with extreme high winds gusting to 160km/h absolutely shaking the house.

With people loosing power all over town Sandra and I made lots of preparations. Water buckets were filled as our well pump won't run without power (the storm would have to die down quite a bit to even set up our standby generator). Sandra made a kick ass pot of stew which could be easily reheated, flashlights and phones were kept on charge.

Although there were many power outages in the metro region we were fortunate not to loose ours here in Torbay.

Before the storm I had made sure the truck was full of gas, all my gas cans were full and a propane brought inside the house for the Coleman stove. A supermarket run was complete well ahead of the storm and crazy last minute storm chip shoppers.

Sooley's driveway in Paradise.

Ronnie's Basement door in Mount Pearl.

Janes kitchen window & patio door in Southlands.

Justin managed to get out ahead of the S.O.E. to get some snow shoved back on his lot. He sure put his new Duramax Sierra plow truck to the test!

Rob from R&D Towing was not spared from the storm's fury in Centre City.

There was a lot of snow but the wind made this a truly wicked storm. They were sustained at 107km/h where that would be the range of wind gusts in an average winter storm.

Things didn't get better overnight as the wind shifted direction and started moving the accumulated snow around all over again.

When the storm finally ended Saturday morning there was 72cm snow on the ground at St. John's International and peaked to over 90cm in Mount Pearl and Paradise!

The winds finally died down to something deal-with-able around 11am so I suited up and headed outside to tackle the driveway.

Although our neighborhood is wide open and flat here in Torbay, drifting still occurs around our vehicles.

Snowdrifts carved by the change in wind direction were absolutely outstanding and like nothing I've seen before.

This wind driven snow was packed in super dense. It was in no way light and fluffy, you could almost walk on the drifts without snowshoes.

The extreme winds and fine snow will find every imperfection in your weatherstripping!

The back window of Area51 is completely blocked!

With my trusty Honda 9/28 gassed up and warmed up I set to work.

The outer end of the driveway wasn't too bad, just over the height of my bucket but the Honda ate through it with ease.

It was one of the first times ever where all the streets in the whole region didn't even have one cut. Drifts across our road were huge.

When our road was finally opened up late that afternoon the CAT 950 loader had a wicked job to break a path though.

The engine compartment of my truck was completely packed with snow. I cleared out  a lot of the snow but it still threw the fan belt. A half hour of cursing and digging out more snow by hand and I had the unbroken (thankfully) fan belt reinstalled. I left the truck running for a couple hours to melt the remaining snow then dry out the engine compartment.

Sandra's car was completely packed in. The Kazashi struggled but thankfully its all wheel drive system worked well and finally broke free from a cocoon of snow.

Once again the basement door filled in completely and then some. The weight of snow actually broke off the exterior light! It took quite awhile and a lot of effort but I finally got it cleared out.

Even our rear patio door was completely blocked, again something we never seen before. Fortunately during the storm the front door stayed clear so I didn't have to venture out in the worst of the weather to keep a door accessible for emergency.

The ol' Honda powered through and got the job done and we even helped out a couple of neighbors with their driveways as well. It took me over 5 hours to get all my snow blowing, shoveling and neighbors helped out after the storm.

Janes backyard in Southlands.

Southlands, there's a street there somewhere!

Janes put his Honda 7/24 to work moving 90cm wind driven snow in Southlands.

Sooley didn't fare much better, they were completely blocked in Paradise.

Lester's Patio was completely buried near Topsail Pond in Paradise.

Municipal and Provincial plows were having a rough time, cleared streets were barely goat paths which meant the S.O.E. remained in effect.

Townhouses on Ronnie's street in Mount Pearl were in for a treat having very little real estate for stacking snow.

Dad also got well and truly buried out in Bay Roberts with a massive 7 foot drift outside the garage! His Yamaha 9/28 blower sure had its work cut out for it.

But that definitely wasn't as bas as what the department of highways faced for the few days and into the rest of the week.

Some city shots from the snowmaggedon warriors FB group.

Some city shots from the snowmaggedon warriors FB group.

Some city shots from the snowmaggedon warriors FB group.

On Sunday French and Stroh had an emergency call-out to Costco and found the road into Galway was just tunnel-like!

With the 24hour S.O.E. still in effect I decided to pass away some time by getting the tracks installed on Project 6x6 Sunday morning. The replacements for my damaged track sections arrived just ahead of the storm so I fitted them in place and installed the tracks following the Argo Accessory installation manual. Thankfully I already had all the tires measured and placed properly on the machine late last week which saved a bunch of time today.

I didn't want to go far by myself so I rode around the yard and up on back of our house for a half hour or so to give the tracks a good workout.

On Monday the towns of Torbay, St. Phillips, and Paradise lifted their S.O.E. from 9am to 6pm while St. John's and Mount Pearl did not. Sandra and I took advantage of the temporary freedom and headed to the supermarket to re-stock some supplies. We wanted to be legal and completely avoid St. John's so we travelled down Torbay Road, across Indian Meal Line, Tuckers Hill, and St. Thomas Line to Sobeys in Paradise. It was a nice drive, roads were narrow but drivers were overall patient and seemingly appreciative of being aloud out even for a short time.

Lineups at the supermarket checkouts were long but very well organized by staff. Even with a very long line took us only 20 minutes to get through.

On Tuesday St. John's temporarily lifted some S.O.E. restrictions allowing stores that sell groceries, pharmaceuticals and fuel to open. Line ups that morning were absolutely insane. Sandra and I avoided it completely having already restocked Monday. Costco was not nearly as busy and by 3pm there were no supermarket lineups and still lots of product on the shelves. pic from snowmaggedon 2020 FB group.

By Wednesday municipalities outside St. John's began relaxing their S.O.E until 9pm or Midnight and were completely lifted by the end of the week. This meant we could get back to our routine of work, life and even going out for a coffee in the evenings. Roads were still narrow and St. John's a state. The capitol city would finally lift their S.O.E. Saturday morning one full week after the storm.

With life getting back to normal, the snow clearing contractor for the St. John's Rod and Gun Club sent us some pics of what he faced out at the club in Holyrood. He had to get a ride in from the highway on a tracked side by side (drove right over the front gate) to get to his backhoe near Range A.

A crew of dedicated volunteers arrived at the club to shovel out doors and cleanup inside the clubhouse which fell victim to the high winds with some snow accumulation through cracks and crevices in the exterior walls of our log structure.