When 71 cm of snow falls over the course of a weekend, even the toughest Canadian city can grind to a halt. From late Friday until Sunday afternoon, an amount equal to all of last winter’s snowfall landed on Toronto. Montreal is better prepared, with systems in place to remove snowbanks and dump them in the river, freeing up lanes of traffic.
The last time Toronto had this amount of snow at one time was in 1999 when the pathetic mayor Mel Lastman (almost as bad as our crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford) called in the Canadian Army to dig the city out. Toronto has struggled with the reputation of being the limp-wristed city ever since.
While the lady on the weather channel sounded the alarm, telling people to stay inside, the V8 powered GMC monster truck in the Demaras Racing stable was rearing to go for a drive.
With the pickup bed loaded with a shovel, sand and traction boards, we set off. Down to the lakeshore to pick up a friend, then west to the airport for him to wait for his flight to Florida.
Four-wheel-drive with low-range gears makes a truck like this unstoppable in the deep snow. There’s no such thing as getting the bumper stuck in a snow bank; just power out! But being so high up does make taking corners a little stressful. So it was slow and steady through the twisty stuff, and a drag race at every stop light. What a fun driving adventure!
You’re buried in snow, and we have not had measurable precipitation in over two months. At least you had fun driving around in the snow.
Oh my goodness, the snow won’t stop, brother! 20 cm on Friday, 30 cm on Saturday, another 20 cm on Sunday. Good thing Monday was a holiday to give the plows a chance to catch up a little.
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I wish we were in a drought. The snow pile on my front yard is now 6 feet high!
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But gosh is it fun to drive in this weather.
You can make a snow maze in your front yard.
Nice video! I used my handy-dandy The Google to convert cm to in and gasped at nearly 28” of snow. Our snowpocalypse was a mere 14” in January and that about did us in.
Also I noticed your intermittent wipers. It reminded me that I tend to use the lowest setting possible of wipers for some reason. Intermittent wipers are a boon to mankind.
You Americans are so funny. A mere 14″. Ha! I shovel 14″ of snow before breakfast and don’t even break a sweat.
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In all seriousness though, look at those poor suckers down in Florida or Alabama when it snows. They are totally unprepared for it. I watched a video of a guy cleaning snow off his windshield with a shovel, and another guy with a broom.
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Yes, thank goodness for engineer Robert Kearns’ invention of the ‘blinking’ windshield wiper. Truly a great invention.
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Reminds me… I need new wipers.
Well of course you do. People of the North are rough and tough and hard to guard.
So much fun!
I hate shoveling, don’t like skiing, and never tried a snowmobile. But driving through a snow storm is a blast. But I’m preaching to the choir, aren’t I?
Yeah that truck was made for that!
I got cold just listening to the wind in that video! Brr 🥶
I was going to add some eerie synthwave music overtop of the ambient sound, but hearing the snow slosh under the tires and the wind whoosh past the microphone helped document what the day was really like; blizzardy!