Homes, schools without power across eastern N.S. following winter storm
Thousands still in the dark, mostly in Cape Breton, following dump of snow, high winds
Several comfort centres opened in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality after Tuesday's early winter storm knocked power to thousands.
As of Wednesday night, more than 3,700 Nova Scotia Power customers were without electricity, mainly in the Antigonish area and Cape Breton.
People living in the CBRM were asked to prepare for an outage lasting up to 72 hours, although some comfort stations were expected to open quickly once the danger of the storm had passed.
"I know I had spoken to our [Emergency Management Organization] manager here and he had been working on potential comfort centres to open up since Monday," said CBRM Mayor Amanda McDougall. "There was an anticipation that some would open yesterday, but it was just simply too dangerous to open up and tell people to start travelling around on the street."
McDougall said while comfort centres do not provide overnight shelter, they are a place where people can gather, charge their phones and devices and have a hot drink.
Opening times and locations of comfort centres are based on the availability of volunteers and the level of need in a community.
On Wednesday afternoon, there were five comfort centres open in Howie Centre, Gabarus, New Waterford, Boisdale and on Grand Lake Road in Sydney.
A comfort centre was proposed for North Sydney, but McDougall said it was not possible because volunteer firefighters have been busy battling fires in the area, including one that killed a pet dog.
On Tuesday, CBC's Tina Simpkin said up to 40 centimetres of snow was expected to fall over Cape Breton and winds were expected to gust up to 100 kilometres an hour.
School closures Wednesday
The Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Centre for Education announced on Twitter Wednesday morning classes were cancelled for Boularderie Elementary, Jubilee Elementary, Ferrisview Elementary, Sydney Mines Middle School Harbourside Elementary and Whitney Pier Memorial Junior High School due to outages.
The school board also announced school buses would travel on paved roads only.
As well, there was a two-hour delayed opening announced at all schools within the Strait Regional Centre for Education due to road conditions.
Here is a look at the some of the snowfall numbers from across the Maritimes from Monday night thru to 8am this morning.<br>As expected, the heaviest snow fell across Cape Breton, PEI and into New Brunswick. <br>Very sharp gradient to the south of the "snow zone".<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/nsstorm?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#nsstorm</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/nbstorm?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#nbstorm</a> <a href="https://t.co/gdLIdwiEbY">pic.twitter.com/gdLIdwiEbY</a>
—@ryansnoddonAnd classes were cancelled at the Bayview Education Centre, the Felix Marchand Education Centre, Richmond Academy, East Antigonish Academy. The board announced that the buildings of the Strait Area Education-Recreation Centre were closed due to outages, as well.
Both Munro Academy campuses were also closed.
The Chignecto-Central Regional Centre for Education also tweeted all Cumberland County schools and Tatamagouche Regional Academy was closed due to road conditions and blowing snow.
