Much of Vancouver Island is waking up to a fresh dusting of snow this morning.
It began falling on the north island Thursday afternoon, and continued moving through to the south island by late Thursday evening.
Environment Canada is calling for a 50/50 chance of more snow flurries mixed with rain this morning on central and southern Vancouver Island, before things clear up this afternoon. Those living in the north island should be waking up to a clearer sky as the system that brought this first snow of the season continues to move south.
BC Hydro is responding to a number of outages affecting a few hundred customers in pockets of Greater Victoria, Duncan, Coombs, Bowser, Hornby Island and Texada Island. Many of these outages are believed to have been caused by heavy winds overnight.
The snow caused slick road conditions across the Island, with traffic on the Pat Bay Highway in Victoria affected just before midnight when a tree fell across the road.
Police on scene where a tree has fallen across #PatBayHwy blocking all SB lanes and one NB lane near Elk Lake w/ reports of car in the ditch pic.twitter.com/Fi4l6m0UoO
— Victoria News (@VictoriaNews) November 3, 2017
The highway has since been reopened to traffic, but was closed for roughly five hours.
According to the Weather Network, this is the first time since 1991 that Victoria received its first snowfall ahead of east coast cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.
Accumulating snow in #Victoria before Toronto, Montreal & Moncton. 7 cm in Victoria and a humidex of 24 #Halifax. pic.twitter.com/9fU7b2vtwJ
— The Weather Network (@weathernetwork) November 3, 2017
More to come…
