Timmins residents still digging out after a month's worth of snow fell in one day last week

Environment Canada said the amount of snow that fell in 24 hours in the Timmins area on Monday, Dec. 29 was equivalent to what that area typically gets in the entire month of December.

Warning preparedness meteorologist Monica Vaswani said they don’t have official numbers due to problems with recording at the Timmins airport, but between 50 and 60 cm of snow fell and winds gusted to 74 km/h at the storm’s peak.

The region typically averages 63.8 cm of snow for December. After the storm it had already topped a metre of snow for the month.

Public works crews are still digging out a week later, and school buses were cancelled Monday morning in Timmins, Cochrane, Ramore and Iroquois Falls.

The supervisor of transportation for Northeast Triboard Student Transportation, Ryan Hartling, said one lane streets and high snow banks are a problem for visibility for bus drivers. He said a lack of safe walking paths could also put children waiting for buses in danger.

“We need clear intersections where there's visibility,” he said. “We need clear areas for students to wait for the bus ... it's still pretty tight.”

Hartling said the magnitude of the storm was unusual,and that he hasn’t seen such issues in his 18 years on the job.

As of the end of Monday, a decision on the morning bus schedule had not yet been made.

City crews were continuing their work to push back snow banks and remove snow while tackling sidewalks.

In a release it said it has to repair stop signs and shovel out hydrants as well.

The city is warning people not to tunnel into snow banks because heavy equipment could come by at any time cutting down banks.

Residents say roads in the residential areas are still down to only one lane, and there’s nowhere to put the snow.

That’s a problem Dean Hachey is facing at his home in an old part of Timmins which is densely populated with smaller houses and lots.

“A lot of people don't have a place to put their snow, and that's why it ends up in the street most of the time,”