A late-winter storm with snow, freezing rain, and heavy rainfall blew through the Lower Mainland on the weekend, again leaving Langley drivers in the ditches or homes dark.
Environment Canada had issued a snowfall warning for Sunday, with between 10 and 25 centimeters of snow expected. However, the weather changed to rain relatively early in the day for much of the Lower Mainland.
Parts of Langley, especially Aldergrove, saw freezing rain during the late afternoon and evening.
Several thousand residents in Aldergrove and Abbotsford were in the dark during parts of Sunday and into Monday morning.
BC Hydro reported that trees were down on wires causing several of the outages.
Students in Aldergrove had a partial disruption to their school day, as Aldergrove Secondary, Betty Gilbert Middle, and Shortreed Elementary all started the day without power.
School was briefly declared cancelled, but the Langley School District announced they would open again after the first block or recess.
Despite the snow and rain, there were relatively few serious traffic accidents over the weekend. In Langley City, fire chief Rory Thompson reported only one crash, of a car into a traffic pole. However, it wasn’t clear if the crash was weather-related.
In Langley Township, firefighters responded to two calls of power lines down, and seven rescue situations for crashed cars. However, there were no critical injuries, said assistant fire chief Bruce Ferguson.