The Christmas day storm that just passed here in Nova Scotia saw 160,000 homes lose power, it got me to thinking about the the worst storm I can remember in our region.
On February 18th and 19th, 2004, a Nor Easter named "White Juan" battered Canada's east coast. It brought with it 120 km an hour winds and just about 100 cm of snow.
The region was absolutely blanketed forcing the province to declare a state of emergency.
Officials also imposed a curfue so cars and pedestrians would be out of the way to let cleanup crews deal with the mess.
The entire city was shut down, noone could get to work and alot of people had to dig just to get out of their homes.
In this country were used to snow, but this was alot for us to even handle. Some people didn't lose their sense of humor however..
The city centre turned into a ski hill. This is downtown Halifax..
Tunnels were dug to allow people to get around. What made matters worse was that the winds created the most massive drifts I've ever experienced. Sidewalks had snow banks taller than myself at 6'2"
Everyone's cars were buried, matter of fact everything was buried under snow! People had to shovel off their rooves fearing they would cave in due to the weight.
It was the first storm in our province's history that we had to ask Ottawa for assistance, the province was granted $3.6 million to help with the cleanup costs.
One cool thing was that people were helping eachother dig out and now we can all tell stories about where we were and what we saw during a monumental storm. I guess that's kind of cool?
*Photos courtesy of thechronicleherald
Thanks for reading!
