A major snowstorm tore through eastern Canada and northeastern US on Sunday, killing at least one person, making driving conditions treacherous and forcing airports to cancel numerous flights.
Southern Ontario and Quebec provinces took the brunt of the bad weather, with Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal struggling under 40cm of snow, as the storm continued unabated late on Sunday.
Environment Canada warned that "a crippling major winter storm with heavy snow and blowing snow as well as some ice pellets is moving in ... dangerous winter weather conditions are imminent or occurring" in the affected regions.
It told the public to expect delays and disruptions in air and rail services, as the storm tracked northward toward New Brunswick.
In Toronto, the snowstorm caused some 600 traffic accidents on Sunday morning alone, the provincial police reported, while a woman was killed by a snowplow on a roadside in London, Ontario.
Around 100 flights were cancelled at Toronto-Pearson and Montreal-Trudeau airports.
"It's a big one, a dangerous one," Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips told CTV Newsnet on Sunday.
"Just because you have this one storm doesn't mean we're into the winter from hell, but my gosh, it's certainly started that way," he said.
The same winter storm front also hammered the Great Lakes and northeastern regions of the US, with winter storm warnings extending from Michigan and Indiana to Maine, the US Weather Channel reported.
Around 30cm of snow had fallen on parts of the Chicago area and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with 25.4cm in Vermont. Meteorologists said that 45.7cm was possible in northern New England and that there was a chance of 35.6cm in parts of Michigan.
"Our biggest advice right now is, stay home," Maine State Police Sergeant Andrew Donovan said.
Visibility in the blowing snow was less than 183m, and in stronger gusts "if there's a car in front of you, you can't even see it," he said.
The storm canceled hundreds of flights at Chicago airports, but the storm did not keep fans away from the New England Patriots-New York Jets game at Foxborough, Massachusetts, even though they had to shovel off their seats in the stadium.
A video of a fire roaring in a fireplace was shown on the scoreboards at both ends of the field.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS