Storm was ‘hurricane inside of a snowstorm’ in Bonavista
BONAVISTA — The blizzard that rocked eastern Newfoundland last Friday and into Saturday was called a hurricane inside of a snowstorm by one weather forecaster.
And that’s what it felt like on the tip of the Bonavista Peninsula.
Shelley Harris of Bonavista agrees. She said if it’s not the storm of a century, it’s at least the storm of the decade.
It was certainly a wild and blustery start to the new decade. Harris and her fellow Bonavista residents were smacked with 75plus centimetres of snow, winds of more than 160 km/h and power outages lasting days.
Harris says she was one of the luckier ones. She had a generator, a snowblower and plenty of supplies, but she admits she doesn’t want to see another storm like it any time soon.
Last Friday was a bit of a wake-up call for her. Originally from Ontario, Harris moved to the province about five years ago.
“It was something I’ve never really seen before,” she said. “This is definitely one for the books.”
Her home on Adam Pardy Drive in Bonavista was severely buffeted with snow and wind. She lost power on Friday around 4:30 p.m. and didn’t get it back until Sunday at 10 p.m.
“We were stocked up on food. … You’re literally housebound. Even when I went outside to do a quick video, it was scary. The wind was just taking me.”
She said her heart goes out to anyone who had to go without power for an extended period, without a generator or any auxiliary heat, because it was extremely cold.
Harris says she doesn’t want to be at the mercy of future storms, and plans to be even more prepared when a big storm looms. She said she’ll have more practical food stored and will undertake periodic shovelling to lessen the load once the storm is over — just not in the extremely high winds such as the ones last Friday evening.
Harris had lots of good things to say about the efforts of service workers, and commented on how events such as the storm can bring the community together.
“Everybody’s been helping everybody. It’s great that way.”
The town of Bonavista was one of the hardest hit with the blizzard. Like many other areas, the town had called a state of emergency.
Mayor John Norman said there was damage to private properties around the town, and destruction of parts of the town’s seawall.
With kilometres of sea wall in the town, in areas like Long Beach and Swyers’ Beach, there are six different breaks or full collapses. He said in two of the areas about 10 to 15 feet of land was washed away where the sea wall would normally stand.
Norman speculated repairs could run anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars into millions of dollars.
The mayor said the town is evaluating lessons learned from the experience with its emergency measures committee.