As Northwest comes out of Snow event, accessing travel information has been challenging

It was all in the pushing and the lifting
today for Prince Rupert residents

The status of the winter storm system that arrived yesterday and stayed overnight for the most is now that of a departing guest, the Snowfall Warning of Friday cancelled as of this afternoon, the temperatures warming up as the day has moved forward.

For residents of the City of Prince Rupert, the city crews have done a fairly strong job of moving the accumulated snowfall from city streets. 

Thankfully for those of us shovelling driveways the snow event was not a moisture laden one, with more of the fluffy and easy shovel version making for the overnight accumulation. 

City Crews were dispatched to their snow removal duties through Friday night into Saturday, the city taking additional steps this morning to close the landfill site for the day to divert all resources to the snow removal work.

The city's priority routes were the early focus for snow removal teams, but by late Friday evening and much of today side streets were seeing some attention.

The City's social media feed features a range of comments, the vast majority of them appreciative of the work during the twenty four hours of our burst of winter.

Air Transportation has been a bit of a challenge for the region in the last 24 hours, yesterday's Air Canada flight to Prince Rupert was cancelled,  and today's attempt diverted to Sandspit for a return to Vancouver. 

Today's flight to Prince Rupert was diverted to
Sandpit this afternoon
(From Flight Aware tracking program)

Yesterday's adventures were chronicled through YPR information stream which noted the runway was in operation on Friday afternoon, there has been no update for Saturday as of yet.

That seemed to set the aviation stage for today and flights further inland form the Northwest Regional Airport.

The situation today in Terrace saw a number of flight cancellations through the morning period that as heavy snow continued to fall in the Terrace region, with visibility at times a significant issue.

Tomorrow may be another troublesome travel day as the snow from the north makes its way south and rendezvous with Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.

As we dig out of the local snow, accessing information on the conditions along Highway 16 is proving to be a frustrating experience.

The last official updates from Drive BC came this morning with the snow clearly having an impact on travel around the Northwest.

Those two advisories have been in place since 6:40 this morning.

A check of the BC Highway Camera network across the Northwest wasn't much help this afternoon, the system having gone down for most of the afternoon.

From the Port Edward turnoff to the Bulkley Valley, the message was the same, with "Transmission Difficulties" the recurring theme for all but a few viewing options.

Things seem to have been sorted out by 4PM, with the Highway 16 cameras from the Port Edward Turnoff to Terrace now back in operation.

Port Edward Turnoff

Rainbow Summit

Kwinitsa

Kasiks

Terrace Highway 16 Roundabout

Should Drive BC upgrade their roads report, the details can be reviewed here and from their Twitter feed.

While the official services weree letting us down a bit with the official word on highway conditions, many travellers have been making use of the Facebook Page that is dedicated to Highway 16 road conditions.

It being a long highway that goes across BC, Alberta and onto the prairies, you have to dig a bit but you do come across some notes on the Northwest to Prince George to at least give you a snapshot of the roads 

today.

No official count has been releases as of yet as to how much snow fell in the last 24 hours, however the good news is that it appears our days of extensive snow shovelling are over for now.  

A more familiar weather forecast is ours through the next week.

More notes on past weather events can be explored from our archive page.