Winter storm brings highway closures, power outages across northwest Ontario

The first winter storm of the season arrived innorthwestern Ontario overnight Thursday, forcingone of the region's main highways to close and knocked out power in several communities.

Snow began falling in the Kenora and Lake of the Woods area Wednesday afternoon as the storm worked itself east from Manitoba. That same system has most of southManitoba and northwest Ontario under various weather advisories from Environment Canada.

Highway 17 was closed between the Manitoba border and Shabaqua, northwest of Thunder Bay,due to poor road and weather conditions, according to the Ontario 511 traveller information service.

Traffic conditions are updated on the Ontario 511 website.

Hydro One reported a number of power outages between Dryden, Ont. and the Manitoba border Thursday afternoon, affecting more than 4,000 customers. The largest outages shown on the utility's storm centre map appeared to be west of Kenora. There werealso several outages in the Thunder Bay surrounding area, affecting nearly 2,000 customers.

Meanwhile, Thunder Bay was spared the snow but asteady rain fellovernight along with strong winds that lasted through the day.

Watch the wicked winds send up strong swells on Lake Superior in Thunder Bay, Ont.

Angry Lake Superior

3 years ago

Duration 0:41

Lake Superior has been rolling today thanks to high winds.

In Kenora, Gerry Cariou spent most of his morning Thursday shovelling snow just a day after cleaning leaves from his eavestrough.

"This is my first shovel, and unfortunately .. it's heavy snow, so it was a nightmare," Cariou said. "I had to take the stuff off the canopies on my deck, that was already starting to bend with the snow on top of it."

Thursday's snowfall came a little later than usual for northwestern Ontario, which usually has snow on the ground by Halloween, Cariou said.

"It's maybe a week or two later than normal, it's later, but not that much later," Cariou said. "On Sunday I was out muskie fishing and it was 10 C, I wouldn't want to be out there muskie fishing today."

Reagan Breeze, who lives in Dryden,saidit was a mix of snow and rain when he went to bed, but he awoke to a winter wonderland Thursday morning.

"It's looking pretty white, covered out there right now, and it came down a pretty good amount as well, too," Breeze said. "I can't see any leaves anymore. I can't see any green. I would say maybe close to [fivecentimetres]on the ground."