Residents, businesses and municipalities in southeast Saskatchewan are dealing with the effects of ongoing blizzard conditions.
A Colorado low rolled into the province on Tuesday night, bringing high winds and significant snowfall to that part of the province along with southern Manitoba.
Dangerous highway conditions and road closures have been reported in both provinces.
Blizzard and winter storm warnings are also still in place, with the storm not expected to move out of the region until Friday morning.
In Estevan, Mayor Roy Ludwig estimates several feet had already fallen by Wednesday afternoon.
“The day started out not too bad, we did have some snow last evening, but then the winds started to pick up and then after lunch more and more snow came,” Ludwig said.
As a result, a large portion of the city has shut down. City Hall, the leisure centre, the airport and the landfill are closed for the remainder of Wednesday, with an update expected to come by Thursday morning.
Ludwig said snow clearing crews had been pulled off the streets as visibility deteriorated.
“As soon as the storm subsides and they can get out, they will,” Ludwig said. “For now, we’re pretty much in lockdown.”
The mayor said many businesses decided to close down on Wednesday.
“We still have some that were able to open but I think you’ll find that a lot of them want to have their people home early so they can get there safely,” Ludwig said. “We’ll look at it again in the morning.”
SGI posted that its Estevan Claims Center is closed until further notice, causing appraisal and driver exam appointments to be rescheduled.
The Southeast Cornerstone Public School Division (SECPSD), which is largely made up by rural students, announced on Tuesday it was canceling all classes for the remainder of the week.
“We had an unprecedented weather event that we were being told was extreme in nature and given lots and plenty of warning about the challenges that was going to bring,” Lynn Little, the director of education of the SECPSD, said. “It isn’t typical that we would close in advance, but when looking at all of the challenges that lay ahead and that we were hearing were in all likelihood coming our way, for safety reasons we felt it best to do something unprecedented.”
Little said the last time that she knows of when the school division canceled classes in advance due to a storm was in 1997, which was before the division amalgamated.
“We did close, but we closed literally the night before and there was already a ton of snow already,” Little said.
Despite the challenges, Estevan’s mayor said it’s clear the community is coming together to support each other.
“I’ve never seen a community like ours, how they get together and they’re running out of the house to push a vehicle out, they ask their elderly neighbors if they need anything,” he explained. “It’s great to see, it really is.”
CHASING THE STORM
For some people, the storm brings new adventure.
Jenny Hagan, a severe weather chaser based in the Kindersley area, headed for Morden, Manitoba before the storm began.
“This morning we saw about two-foot snow drifts in the area and the wind has sort of picked up off and on,” Hagan said. “We kind of drove around town. Lots of people getting stuck out there trying to get to work so we dug out a few people so they could get on their way.”
She said this storm is comparable to some others she has seen in her career.
“There’s going to be a lot more snowfall involved in this event and it’s a heavy, wet snow so it’s not something that’s very easy to drive through,” Hagan said.
She said she plans to wait out the storm in Morden and will head out once it has passed.
As for Regina, about 20 centimeters of snow could fall by Friday morning, however the Queen City is not expected to see the full force of the storm.