The calendar read April 9, but it felt more like February 9 in the Sydney area on Wednesday after a light dusting of snow and temperatures hovering around the freezing point.
“Very sick of winter weather,” said Shawn Thomson, owner of a food truck in downtown Sydney. “Very, very sick. I’m tired of looking at the snow.”
Several weeks into spring, people started their day by having to scrape off their vehicle windshields.
“April 9, it should be birds singing, sunshine, people running around in shorts and t-shirts but hey, what can you do?” Thomson said with a laugh.
The Major League Baseball season is a couple of weeks in, but no ball was being played on snow-covered ballparks in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality on Wednesday.
Walking the dog - or doing anything outside for that matter - meant bundling up.
“It does feel crazy, but dogs need to get out and go for a walk, doesn’t matter what the weather is like, right?” said one woman walking her seven-year-old border collie Jackson in Sydney’s snow-covered Open Hearth Park.
Others say all of the winter-like weather has been affecting their get-up-and-go.
“I enjoy the winter, but I’m sick of the fact that I don’t have enough sunshine anymore,” added another man on Charlotte Street in downtown Sydney.
The sun was out on Wednesday, but lately it’s been the exception and dreary skies have been the rule.
History, however, shows that spring snow in the Maritimes really isn’t so unusual.
On April 19, 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, the Sydney area got hit with a spring storm that brought roughly 30 centimeters.
And, on April Fool’s Day 11 years ago, Cape Bretoners were fooled by an ice storm that knocked down power poles.
“Easter weekend we usually get snow, so it’s not unusual,” said a woman walking her dog in Sydney’s Wentworth Park.
This winter, people in Sydney and surrounding communities were spared any major storms. There were none that amounted to 40 centimeters or more.
Still, this late into the calendar, people felt overdue for better weather.
“I mean, you see the flowers poking through and you’re getting excited and then the next thing the snow is covering them over for a while,” the woman in Wentworth Park added.
Single-digit temperatures remain in the forecast for the Sydney area in the coming days.
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