A massive cross-country winter storm is unleashing destructive winds and heavy snow, causing hundreds of airline cancellations and power outages from Canada’s coast to coast.
The “bomb cyclone” that blew in on Thursday night is expected to stick around during the holiday weekend.
Here’s everything to know about the storm.
What is bomb cyclone?
According to Global News chief meteorologist Anthony Farnell, most of Ontario and southern Quebec have met the threshold of a “bomb cyclone.”
Farnell said the storm is arriving from the U.S. Midwest.
A front of cold air is moving down from the Arctic, sending temperatures plunging.
As the Arctic air pushes into the warmer, moister air ahead of it, the system quickly develops into serious weather — into what’s known as a “bomb cyclone.” It’s a fast-developing storm in which atmospheric pressure falls very quickly over 24 hours. Whether a storm qualifies as a bomb cyclone depends on how fast the pressure drops.
Although Friday will see mild temperatures as the system moves in with rain, Farnell said earlier this week that it will be replaced with much colder Arctic air and snow as Friday progresses.
In the United States, the National Weather Service is calling the winter storm a “once-in-a-generation type event.”
It has turned deadly in the U.S., where at least six people have died in vehicle accidents during the treacherous weather, Accuweather has reported.
What are the impacts?
Environment Canada issued weather advisories and special statements for much of the country earlier this week.
The storm will be impacting pretty much everyone as it moves from Western Canada and into Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
Peter Kimbell, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, told Global News it will be a multi-day weather event with fluctuating temperatures that could cause treacherous driving conditions.
Kimbell said Friday will be the worst day for travel, particularly for Ontarians, and that is why the weather agency is issuing the alert early as the Christmas holidays approach.
About 320,000 people across the country are already facing power outages, according to an outage tracker from the generator company Generac, which aggregates data from providers across the country.
And these outages aren’t going to end any time soon, Farnell warned.
“You shouldn’t expect (power) back until the earliest, I’m thinking on Sunday. That’s Christmas Day. Because crews just cannot get out in blizzard conditions, they can’t deal with the cold,” he said in an interview with AM640 Toronto, a radio station owned by Global News’ parent company Corus Entertainment, early Friday morning.
Air Canada and Flair Airlines have also cancelled a number of their scheduled flights.
How common are such storms in Canada?
“We may only see one of these storms every five or 10 years,” Environment Canada meteorologist Mitch Meredith told The Canadian Press on Friday. “I’ve only seen a couple of storms like this in the last 20 years.”
Kimbell told Global News on Dec. 20 that winter storms during the wintertime are expected and “nothing unusual.”
“This one this weekend will be particularly severe with a very deep central pressure of very strong winds across Ontario, so this is going to be a particularly dangerous storm, but I don’t think it’s a precursor to the winter,” Kimbell said.
But “this one’s going to be a big one and there’ll be a lot of impact for a lot of people,” Kimbell said in an interview with Global News.
Come New Year’s Eve, many parts of Canada will see temperatures above seasonal, Farnell said.
That trend will probably last through the first half of January, before shifting to a “very cold” end of January and a potential start to February as well.
This season will also be the third-consecutive La Niña winter Canadians have experienced, Farnell added. La Niñas develop over the Pacific region due to colder-than-normal water temperatures and impact the weather pattern across Canada.
“Very rarely have we had three years in a row of La Niña,” he said, adding that La Niña winters play out with similarities to previous ones; 2022 started with really cold weather across the country.
— with files from The Associated Press, The Canadian Press and Global News’s Rachel Gilmore, Aaron D’Andrea and Gabby Rodrigues
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
