Piercing cold across much of Canada brings heavy snow, power outages

Canadians crossways to the highest degree of the rural area ar contending with bone-chilling temperatures and heavily snowfall on Sunday.

A polar vortex has blanketed much of the country in recent days, prompting Environment Canada to issue orange alerts for many jurisdictions — denoting that it believes severe weather is likely to result in significant damage, disruption or health impacts.

From record-breaking lows to hundreds of cancelled flights, here's how the polar vortex is affecting parts of the country

Environment Canada issued an orange warning for most of Saskatchewan, where the agency said many towns in the province have broken cold weather records.

Brad Vrolijk, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, stressed that in these conditions, “skin can freeze in under a couple minutes.... When you throw even a light wind on top of that, it gets very dangerous."

Saskatoon has escalated its winter emergency response plan from now until Wednesday because of the cold snap. 

With an estimated 40 centimetres of snow expected to fall in the province, officials in Hamilton, the Greater Toronto Area and Kitchener-Waterloo urged residents to stay home.

Despite calls to stay off the roads, the Ontario Provincial Police said it responded to more than 50 car collisions in southwestern Ontario.

Environment Canada issued an orange alert for the GTA, warning of significantly reduced visibility with strong wind gusts up to 50km/h throughout the day before the system starts moving out overnight.

Over 60 per cent of more than 900 flights arriving at and departing from Toronto Pearson International Airport were cancelled between Saturday and Sunday, according to the airport's website. Another 10 per cent were delayed.

Environment Canada said the country's capital could be hit by 20 centimetres of snow, which is expected to fall throughout Sunday and taper into flurries by Monday morning.

The forecast has prompted the City of Ottawa to issue a winter weather street parking ban for Monday that will last from 10 a.m. Until 7 p.m. ET.

The City of Kingston, meanwhile, has declared a "significant weather event." It's advising residents to use extra caution and reminding them that normal winter maintenance for roads and sidewalks may not happen because of the snow and cold.

The Canadian Red Cross has opened an emergency shelter in the city of Côte Saint-Luc — a residential suburb on the island of Montreal — after thousands of residents lost power during the cold snap on Saturday.

As of 10:30 a.m. ET Sunday, 3,727 of the 13,368 homes affected had their power restored, according to the City of Côte Saint-Luc.

Hydro-Québec said the outages began some time Saturday morning.

On its website, Hydro-Québec listed equipment failure as the cause of the outages in some sectors, while in other areas the cause was listed as unknown.

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro said on Sunday that ice removal efforts at the Bay d’Espoir power plant — the largest generating plant on the island — have been “very successful."

The operation involved a team of divers braving frigid water with air compressors to try and clear the ice.

N&L Hydro announced on Friday that a buildup of frazil ice — a slushy mix of ice crystals suspended in water — had blocked the intake at the plant, forcing it to entirely shut down for the first time since 1967.

Power warnings remained in place on Sunday, with both N&L Hydro and Newfoundland Power continuing to ask customers to conserve electricity and prepare for the possibility of rotating outages.

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