Montréal receives quite some snow in winter covering it with a blanket of white. On average about 10 to 15cm of snow will fall per week, usually over one day. Locals will talk about snow “storms”; but in reality it just amounts to a lot of snow falling in one day.
Snow falls can be very beautiful; leaving a clean feeling to the environment.
However, once 2.5cm have fallen the city’s snow removal team will jump into action and start clearing the roads and sidewalks. They do this with snowploughs mounted on the front of trucks and by distributing salt on the roads. After this has happened, much of what was white has turned brown. The mountains of brown will then be slowly removed to dumps so that it can melt away. After 2007-2008’s near record snowfall, the dumps were still melting in August.
Generally it’s easy to drive around after the snow has fallen as it’s cleared pretty quickly, but people will drive more slowly so you need to allow more time to go anywhere.
What really make’s Montréal spectacular is the strength of the sun that shines down on it. Montréal has the same latitude as Bordeaux, so you have this wonderfully bright sun with deep blue skies illuminating the snow covered ground. Much nicer than grey and mild central European winters!
Here are some photographs of Old Montréal and the port a few days after snow fall.
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Place Jacques Cartier
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Hotel de Ville – Town Hall – Montréal
-
- Montréal’s Port Frozen Over
-
- Place Jacques Cartier
-
- Montréal’s Port
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Places d’Armes
-
- Place d’Armes
-
- Place d’Armes
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Montréal’s Port walk
-
- Sun on the Snow
Moving to Montréal 