Summer snow falls in parts of Newfoundland

It may be summer, but snow was falling in parts of Newfoundland Tuesday.

John Jack Lushman said there were roughly five centimetres of snow Tuesday morning on the deck of his cabin near Burgeo, N.L.

“I never seen it this late in June. I seen it in June but can’t remember it being this late and this much,” said Lushman, who shared a photo of a flowers he had planted on Sunday that were now buried in snow.

Environment Canada said the snowfall set a record for June 26 in Gander, N.L., where about two centimetres had fallen by midmorning Tuesday. There was no previous snowfall recorded on that day.

“We’ll be in the record books for that,” said meteorologist Justin Boudreau. “But we’re not complete strangers to late-season snowfalls in Gander.”

Boudreau said 3.2 centimetres of snow fell in Gander on June 20, 1996. The city also saw .8 centimetres of snow on June 29, 1952, and .2 centimetres on June 30, 1995.

The province’s Transportation Department was warning residents to drive cautiously and tweeted a photo of a Burgeo road covered in a thin layer of snow. Other photos on social media show wet snow covering cars and a sprinkle of snow on deck furniture.

Jake Reid tweeted: “Newfoundland: where snow tires are considered all-season tires.”

Meanwhile, Twitter user Colin Ian Murray declared his love for the province, despite the snow.

“Hard to swallow, but still beats living anywhere else!” tweeted Murray.

Boudreau said the temperature was hovering around the freezing mark in Gander on Tuesday morning, and was only forecast to reach 3 C, which would break another record. The previous coldest June 26 was 4.4 C. The average normal temperature is around 19 C, and the highest was 32 C.

“We’re opening a pretty wide range of temperatures for this time of year,” said Boudreau.

But it didn’t appear the snow would be sticking around.

The national weather forecaster had issued rainfall warnings for eastern and central parts of Newfoundland, where between 40 and 70 millimetres of rain were expected to fall by Tuesday evening.