Prince George woke up Wednesday to a howling, swirling wind and the first genuine snowfall of the season as Mother Nature lived up to the dangerous weather warning Environment Canada issued shortly before 4 a.m.
It made for treacherous conditions for motorists and walkers alike and kept B.C. Hydro busy as a northeast wind blew in at 30 km/h gusting to as high as 70.
By 4:30 p.m., crews had restored power to nearly 8,500 homes and businesses in Prince George, most of them north of the Nechako River, and more than 2,100 homes in Mackenzie.
But nearly 500 further homes and businesses in Prince George and more than 1,100 in Mackenzie were without power as a result of weather-related outages that struck in the afternoon.
And for those customers restoration times of as late as 10 p.m. were predicted Prince George and 11:30 p.m. for Mackenzie.
Nukko Lake elementary school was among the casualties and was closed for the day.
"In many rural schools with wells an outage means no light but also no water for washrooms," school district superintendent Brian Pepper said, who added outages usually last only part of a day to one day in length.
The cause is an in intense low-pressure system that has moved close to the central coast.
"The associated frontal system will bring heavy snow to Prince George and Bulkley Valley and The Lakes - southeast regions today with total snowfall amounts of 10 to 15 centimetres," Environment Canada said.
"The Arctic front will remain south of Prince George so the combination of strong northeast winds of 50 gusting to 70 kilometres per hour and the new snow will create poor visibilities in blowing snow."
The snow was expected to stop falling over Wednesday night but the cold is to remain, according to Environment Canada, which is calling for mixture of sun and cloud and a steady -10 C today with winds of 30 km/h from the northeast.
The trend is to continue for the next four days with highs in the -10 to -12 range and lows dipping down to -20 - so plug in your block heater. A 60-per-cent chance of flurries is predicted for Tuesday with a high of -11 and a low of -18.
The situation is in marked contrast to the same point last year when daytime highs were consistently above freezing for most of the month. Indeed, it was a decidedly milder November than most with an average daytime high of 3.4, well up from the norm of 0.6, and the coldest overnight low was a balmy -10.4.
But all that changed in December which turned out to be persistently colder than usual with an average daily high of -9.7, compared to the norm of -4, although only 34.4 cm of snow fell, compared to the norm of 54.4.
