The relentless extreme winter weather continues to wreak havoc in Central Canada, causing major travel problems and backlogs including at Toronto's Pearson airport, where flight landings were halted for much of the morning.
Officials implemented a ground stop early Tuesday morning, which meant no arriving flights were permitted to land. The ground stop was lifted at 10 a.m. ET, but it's expected to take some time to clear the backlog at the airport.
Thousands of would-be passengers queued inside Toronto's main air travel hub throughout the morning, awaiting word of their flight status or simply to retrieve their luggage.
"I stood in a three-hour line as well as on hold for three hours until Air Canada hung up on me," one passenger told CBC News. "At the end of the line, they tell you they will not rebook your flight, so I'm a little bit frustrated right now."
In addition to flights that weren't permitted to land, a backlog of planes lined the tarmac, waiting for a gate to become available to offload passengers.
"Travellers getting off those planes are very tired, very frustrated and very angry," CBC reporter Linda Ward said Tuesday morning. "One family I spoke to waited on the tarmac for four hours. They said this was the worst flight they've ever been on."
Police were forced to move extra officers into the arrivals and departures areas for crowd control, the CBC's Tony Smyth reported.
Airlines are urging passengers to check their flight status before heading to the airport because of cancellations or delays.
On Monday, dozens of passengers were stranded on the tarmac for hours due to a backlog of planes waiting for a gate.
The ground stop in Toronto also created huge delays at Halifax's Stanfield International Airport on Tuesday morning.
Overnight, the City of Toronto experienced temperatures feeling as cold as –35 C to –40 C with the wind chill. Environment Canada warned residents that exposed skin can freeze in less than five minutes in such conditions.
'Light at the end of the tunnel'
The miserable weather is across much of Canada, with all of southern Ontario and most of the north facing dangerous wind chills ranging from –30 C to –45 C. Some areas of the south also face blizzard and snow squall warnings.
Forecasters say the strong winds will carry the squalls farther inland and snowfall amounts up to 15 centimetres are possible while visibilities could drop to nil in blizzard conditions.
"I think where we're feeling the worst of it, and you have to remember cold is a relative term ... I think into parts of Ontario, certainly southern Ontario, this morning is where we'll see folks being more miserable than other parts of the country that generally deal with some colder temperatures," said CBC meteorologist Jay Scotland.
Environment Canada issued a flash freeze warning as a wave of arctic air descended over southern Ontario on Monday. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
"So we are looking at bitterly cold temperatures in Ontario, in Quebec."
In Quebec, wind, rain and blizzard warnings are in effect for most of the province. About 4,100 Hydro-Québec customers remain without power, down from a high of 30,000 on Monday afternoon.
"We're seeing an abnormal start to the winter," Scotland said.
"We really are just over two weeks into the winter. We saw a very cold wrap to fall heading into winter so it feels like winter has been around a lot longer than it has been."
Scotland said most of the country is forecast to return to seasonal temperatures by the weekend.
"So there is light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
"Unfortunately, another bitterly cold one to get through today for much of the country from the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, temperatures dropping in Atlantic Canada."
Newfoundland braces for melt
About 1,000 customers in Newfoundland are still in the dark after a mass power outage that began over the weekend, and there are reports of additional localized outages in St. John's this morning.
Officials in Newfoundland say rotating outages could return during peak demand periods. At the peak of the outages Saturday morning, about 190,000 customers were without power.
Much of the province remains under wind, rainfall, freezing rain and winter storm warnings. An additional five to 10 centimetres of snow is expected to fall in some areas, while others are warned to expect as much as 35 millimetres of rain and winds of up to 100 kilometres an hour.
CBC reporter Vik Adhopia said the province is bracing for more problems in the face of an extreme temperature shift.
"It's been a complete turnaround in the weather. We went from blizzard conditions and extreme cold to this freezing rain, and of course that puts the power lines at risk, and Newfoundland Power has redeployed its crews across the island in anticipation of new outages," he said.
"We also have so much snow on the ground that there's a whole other problem that we could be faced with and that's a major melt as temperatures head up to 7 C."
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