Toronto and North America grapple with storm damage: WestJet cancels 60 more Pearson departures on Saturday

Friday’s winter storm brought freezing rain, heavy snow and ice pellets across Toronto and parts of southern Ontario. Follow the Star’s weather file for updates on the weather, traffic, school closures, potential delays at Pearson and more.

10:03 a.m.: WestJet says 60 flights scheduled to fly out of Toronto Pearson Airport on Saturday have been cancelled, as well as one flight scheduled for Sunday that’s been cancelled ahead of Christmas Day.

WestJet cancelled all flights at airports in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia on Friday with affected airports including those in Toronto, Ottawa, London, Ont., Waterloo, Ont., and Montreal. The airline had already cancelled 300 flights on Friday.

WestJet’s chief operations officer Diederik Pen says the company apologizes for the disruptions to holiday travel plans and its teams are trying to recover operations on the ground and in the air.

Pen says the extreme and prolonged weather impacting regions across B.C., southern Ontario and Quebec are unlike anything the company has ever experienced.

9:49 a.m: The worst of Friday’s winter storm seems to have passed after the “once in a decade” weather event of freezing rain, heavy snowfall and gusting winds eased into the weekend.

Environment Canada has called off the winter storm warning for Toronto and the GTA.

“There is no question that the storm and the amount of snow were much less than expected, and that’s good news for everyone,” said Mayor John Tory during a press conference Saturday morning.

The remaining weather advisory is now in place calling for strong winds picking up to 80 km/h, flurries and scattered blowing snow that will last into the evening.

9:46 a.m.: The wild winter storm continued to envelop much of the United States on Saturday, bringing blinding blizzards, freezing rain, flooding and life-threatening cold to most of the country. A major electricity grid operator that serves 65 million people across the eastern U.S. says power plants are having difficulty operating in the frigid weather and has asked residents to refrain from unnecessary use of electricity.

Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection issued the emergency call for conservation system-wide — asking residents in 13 states to set thermostats lower than usual, to postpone use of major appliances like stoves and dishwashers and to turn off nonessential lights. Commercial and industrial power users have also been asked to cut back.

PJM officials said they want people to be prepared for the possibility of rolling blackouts. “It’ll be short-lived, we’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but it is a real possibility,” said Mike Bryson, PJM’s senior vice president for operations.

PJM territory covers all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

The storm was nearly unprecedented in its scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. Freezing rain coated much of the Pacific Northwest in a layer of ice, while people in the Northeast faced the threat of coastal and inland flooding.

As millions of Americans were travelling ahead of Christmas, more than 5,700 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were cancelled Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware. Multiple highways were closed and crashes claimed at least six lives, officials said.

4:06 a.m.: Weather warnings remained in place across the country early Saturday as major storms continue to dump snow and freezing rain on Quebec, Ontario and B.C., and batter the Atlantic provinces with heavy rain and powerful winds.

A Hydro-Quebec spokesman said about 1,000 workers were repairing power lines to restore electricity to approximately 366,588 customers as of early Saturday morning.

Across the border in Ontario, more than 77,000 customers of Hydro One (which supplies electricity to much of the province outside of Toronto) were without power.

More than 41,000 New Brunswick Power customers were still in the dark early Saturday, along with 27,411 in Nova Scotia.

Environment Canada forecasted rain and powerful gusts through to Christmas Eve in the Maritimes, with the storm moving into Newfoundland and Labrador until Saturday night.

The fierce winter storms put a damper on holiday travel plans as well, with flights cancelled at major airports in Ontario, Quebec and B.C., and police closing sections of provincial highways due to hazardous driving conditions.

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