Remembering White Juan: 10 years later
Reporter
Tuesday, February 18, 2014, 11:53 AM -
Between February 18 and 19, 2004, just five months after Hurricane Juan, Canada's east coast was hit by a strong Nor'easter nicknamed "White Juan."
The blizzard dumped huge amounts of snow across the Atlantic provinces. Wind gusts of up to 120 km/h were recorded in some locations and snowfall totals in some areas were almost a metre high.
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A province-wide state of emergency was declared in Nova Scotia.
Halifax imposed traffic curfews in the days following the storm to help with the massive clean up.
"Hurricane disguised as a Blizzard" as Mr. David Phillips described it. 10 years ago #WhiteJuan began its 3 day assault on ATL Canada
— Chris Murphy TWN (@chris_m_twn) February 17, 2014
The federal government just recently announced a final payment of $3.6 million has been made to the province of Nova Scotia to help with costs incurred during White Juan.
Although the storm happened back in 2004, the repayment is all part of the disaster financial assistance arrangements program.
The program was put in place back in 1970 to help individual provinces following natural disasters.
The severity of White Juan made it the first and only winter storm for which Nova Scotia required this type of assistance.
"We've only had one white Juan or one blizzard claim for snow so it’s very rare to have a claim like this," says Paul MacNeil with Nova Scotia EMO. "We've never done one since then, but it was a major snowfall in Nova Scotia. I mean there was 95 centimetres of snow that fell in the province. There was high winds causing huge amount of drifts and the city was closed down for approximately three days while the snow was removed from the city."
A total of 18 municipalities were impacted by the blizzard.
