My computer was broken for two weeks, so here is my photoset of the
Burnaby snowmageddon on last Monday.
The forecast on previous night called for heavy rains for Monday, which was true for many parts of Metro Vancouver. However, to many people's surprise, in Burnaby and the surrounding hilly areas all the rain fell as snow, catching drivers by surprise. Thousands of collisions happened during the day and hundreds of thousands had big troubles making it to work or school. Here's how it looked like.
Waking up to a snow day I decided that it would wise not to drive to work and rather walk having my my camera with me.
Metrotown has turned overnight to a winter wonderland with no snow plows in sight anywhere. It would turn out that Burnaby was caught totally off-guard by the storm....
Kingsway through Metrotown was totally jammed by sliding cars. Traffic was not moving anywhere in the slippery slush.
Getting on the side streets the view turned really nice. Unfortunate for those people waiting for bus, there wouldn't be any buses making it to them on that morning.
Mayhem was everywhere. I saw dozens of stuck cars, buses and trucks.
In the afternoon things got even worse with heavy snowfall continuing until the evening. These long line-ups of cars at 3pm were not moving anywhere and I was faster walking by them.
Some people had even abandoned their cars in the snow.
Buses were really struggling with the slippery hills that are everywhere in Burnaby. There were long line-ups of stuck buses on some streets.
By the time I got back in Metrotown the snowfall had ceased. Day 1 of many more snow days to come has ended.
Not everyone was miserable from the snow and I saw many people making snowmen.
Snowfall has was followed by beautiful winter days. What a sight!
It's of course easy to laugh at our puny amounts of snow and the havoc it creates, but one has to consider that normally there is snow on ground for only few days a year and in many places almost ever. So, when a big snow storm sweeps through the region, mayhem always follows, as people don't simply have proper winter tires. That's Vancouver in winter all right.
More snowy photos to come.