1998 Ice Storm

The 1998 Ice Storm was a massive ice storm that struck eastern Canada in January 1998.

Overview

Freezing rain is common during Canadian winters, generally occurring at the narrow boundary between cold air from the west and moist air from the east. Generally speaking, regular rain falls on the east side of the boundary, and snow on the west side. The Montreal area typically receives freezing rain between 12 to 17 times a year, averaging between 45 and 65 total hours of rain.

The Ice Storm

In January 1998, a freak weather system occurred when a large body of warm moist air coming in from the Gulf of Mexico was forced into higher altitudes by a layer of very cold high pressure air coming in from Labrador. At the same time, an unusual pocket of high pressure over the Atlantic Ocean over Bermuda prevented the system from moving further to the east, as most Canadian storms do. As such, instead of a narrow vertical boundary layer between moist and cold air covering a few hundred square miles and moving rather quickly from west to east, a large horizontal zone of rain over very cold air covered an area roughly bounded by Kingston, Ottawa and Quebec City for several days until the cold system broke through to the Atlantic. Between January 5 and January 10, 1998, for more than 80 hours freezing rain fell over an area of several thousand square miles of Eastern Ontario and South-Western Quebec. Further to the west, Southern Ontario received heavy rain, while further east, the Maritimes mostly received heavy snow.

Prior to the 1998 storm, the last major ice storm to hit Montreal (1986) deposited around 30 to 60 millimetres (1½'' to 2¼'') of ice. However, the 1998 storm left deposits twice that thick, downing power lines all over the region, destroying or damaging most of the trees in Montreal, and leaving streets covered in a thick impassable layer of ice.

Effects

The storm left more than 4 million people without electricity, most of them in southern Quebec and Eastern Ontario. The area south of Montreal (Montérégie) was so affected that the triangle formed by Saint-Hyacinthe, Granby and Saint-Jean-Chrysostome was nicknamed le triangle de la noirceur ("Triangle of darkness"). Cities such as Ottawa, Smiths Falls and other Eastern Ontario municipalities declared states of emergency. On January 7, Ontario, Quebec and New-Brunswick called on the help of the Canadian Forces, prompting the deployment of more than 15,000 military personnel at the peak of the crisis.

Millions of trees were brought down by the weight of ice, as well as about 1000 steel electrical pylons (said, in Quebec, to be the most solid in the world) and 25,000 wooden transmission poles. Teams were brought in from places such as Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, along with teams from the United States, and the Canadian Forces to help restore power to affected homes in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec.

Three weeks after the end of the storm proper, there were still 700,000 people without electricity. Estimates of death directly linked to the storm vary from 25 to more than 40 and damage estimates reach around $2 billion Canadian for Quebec alone.

The maple syrup and fruit culture growing regions suffered heavy blows and massive losses in the storm, which also greatly affected dairy producers that could not provide heat to their livestock, and lost many of them.

External links

• Sun media coverage
• Brockville Recorder and Times
• Environment Canada
• Ice Storm narrative
• The Ice Storm of 1998 at CBC Archives