21 years since Canada's worst ice storm ever

kiligirl (66)in #history • 6 years ago

It was unimaginable.

First came the freezing rain - five times more than the forecasters had anticipated. Freezing rain, for those who haven't had the pleasure of living in a climate where it's a thing, happens around the freezing point of 0°C. It can make conditions for driving and walking extremely treacherous as the ground is often covered with a thin layer of invisible ice, coated with a bit of water to make for a frictionless experience.

Forecasters had expected 5-20mm of rain, but between 5 and 10 January of 1998, 100mm fell. Nobody could have predicted just how catastrophic this precipitation would be, not because it caused flooding (it didn't), but because it froze in place, then the temperatures plunged - and the electricity network collapsed. Literally. Under the weight of the ice, the pylons and high voltage lines transmitting essential electricity simply crumpled.

Image credit: Claude Rivest/Archives Journal de Montréal/Agence QMIImage source

Image source

Image credit: Alfred Lanctôt/Archives Journal de Montréal/Agence QMIImage source

And I left Montreal to live in Johannesburg in the middle of this storm

Funny how memory gets hazy. I think I was supposed to leave Montreal the evening of 8 January 1998, but my flight was delayed and was either the last or the second last flight out of the city, perhaps for days. So maybe I actually left in the early hours of the 9th. Since the 8th stands out in my mind, it must have been the date my flight was scheduled.

In any case, there was nobody on the road to the airport as we made our way there around 2 in the morning. My taxi driver and I nearly shared a heart attack as a sheet of ice from an overhead signboard crashed onto the highway just metres in front of us. Since we were driving through inches-thick slush, there's no way we could have avoided it if it had fallen just seconds later.

We had to wait hours more for our flight to depart as the crew were apparently on the road from Ottawa, dealing with similarly atrocious conditions to what my taxi driver and I had endured.

I was the lucky one

I had no idea that this storm would lead to a crisis which would take months to resolve.

Over 3 million Quebecers were without power when the temperature plunged to deep freeze levels. No lights, no heat, no electricity for petrol pumps, no electricity for water treatment. Fallen power lines, still live and jerking crazily, made movement on certain streets impossible.