Crews continuing cleanup around St. John's following weekend snowstorm

Residents and city workers in the St. John's area are continuing to clean up following a dumping of heavy snow over Friday and Saturday.

Seventy-two centimetres of snow was reported at St. John's International Airport over two days. St. John's Mayor Danny Breen said cleanup is time-consuming, but city crews are making their way through it.

"We had a lot of drifting that caused problems. We were able to keep our plows on the road during the whole storm," Breen told reporters Monday.

"We had a lot of cars that were left abandoned or just left and couldn't get off the road on Friday evening and into Saturday. That created a lot of problems, particularly in the downtown area. And I know in some areas downtown, we had to use sidewalk snowplows to get up some of the streets because of the cars and that."

Breen said crews are focused on widening streets across the city Monday and on snow removal in areas prone to flooding. If a street hasn't been widened yet, he said, it will be done in time.

"We have all our resources out and dealing with the next wave of whatever it is we're going to be dealing with," Breen said.

"It is a lot of snow to fall in a short period of time…. But it's going to take a while to get it cleaned up."

Breen said the city has a $25-million snowplowing budget, but will dip into a reserve pool of leftover funds from previous years for this season. He's unclear of how much the storm will cost to clean, but says safety for residents is paramount.

Cleanup is also continuing at St. John's International Airport.

"I think the amount was a big surprise to everybody, passengers and the general public alike. But, you know, certainly snow events always have an impact on airports, but we're always ready for it," Lisa Bragg, the St. John's International Airport Authority's director of business development said Monday.

Some flights were cancelled at the airport on Friday and Saturday, but Bragg said the airport's runways didn't close, unlike the "Snowmageddon" storm of 2020.

Bragg said cleanup efforts have been "substantial" over the last couple of days and are continuing on Monday. If passengers returning need help with the piled-up snow, the airport has made shovels available for use at the parking booth.

More messy weather is expected for Monday, with almost all of Newfoundland under multiple weather warnings from Environment Canada.

The Avalon, Burin and Bonavista peninsulas are under rainfall and wind warnings Monday, and could see between 30 and 50 millimetres of rain on Monday evening and into Tuesday. Localized flooding is possible given the recent snowfall, according to Environment Canada.