Snow plows clear snow from a street in Montreal on Wednesday.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante is pleading for patience and urging caution as the city’s snow removal trucks and plows struggle to clear the record-shattering snowfall that has blanketed Montreal.
Plante says the city’s snow removal crews are working around the clock to clear streets and sidewalks, and as of this morning they had cleared about 15 per cent of the city’s streets.
Plante says residents should avoid going outside as much as possible as snow crews do their work in the coming days, asking that both motorists and pedestrians take extra care.
The city says cleaning up after back-to-back storms hit Thursday and Sunday will cost more than $50 million and take at least another week.
Environment Canada meteorologist Gina Ressler says Montreal received 72 centimetres of snow over the four days, 10 centimetres more than the previous record for a similar period set in February 1954.
Ressler says two storms of such magnitude striking Montreal – which included rare blizzard conditions on Sunday – is “incredibly exceptional.”