Monday morning's messy mix of rain and snow was blamed for nine motor vehicle accidents.

Three of the nine crashes resulted in minor injuries, said Saint John police sergeant Jeff LaFrance. There were no injuries in the other six.

"It wasn't as bad as it looked out there, I guess," he said, adding that the accidents happened all over the city and not in one particular area.

"There were some north and one west, one at Loch Lomond and one coming just off the highway," he said.

The blast didn't affect flights into or out of the Saint John Airport; according to the facility's website the flights were all on time. The ferry to Grand Manan also weathered the storm, with no crossings cancelled.

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A plow clears Highway 111, the airport arterial highway, Monday. A weather system dumped a mixture of snow and rain on the area. High winds also caused power outages in the Rothesay area.
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Emergency workers work to free a person trapped in a van that flipped over on Highway 111, the airport arterial highway, Monday morning.


The city's works department's main concern during the minor storm, which dumped from two to four centimetres of snow on the city, was to get "anchor ice" off the roads, said Kevin Rice, the city's deputy commissioner of municipal operations.

"Our regular people started at 7 a.m., making sure we get a swipe in on every road," he said.

"Anchor ice" is the bumpy ice that stays on the road once it freezes.

"It's so hard to get off the road once it's on. It just beats your plow to pieces.

"Our focus this morning was to get as much as that slush off the road as we could before any potential freezing."

By late morning, even the priority four streets had been swiped by a plow at least once, Rice said, and workers were monitoring temperatures to decide if salt or sand would be needed.

"It's been such an open winter, we're getting a little spoiled," Rice said. "Sometimes, we're not driving according to the conditions."

Blustery winds that gusted at 60 km/h also caused havoc with power lines.

Although no outages were reported in the Saint John area, which is serviced by Saint John Energy, about 750 homes and businesses in the Rothesay area were left in the dark after ice built up on power lines and high winds caused trees and branches to blow into the lines.

Heather MacLean of NB Power said the outages were the worst of the winter.

"I would say we had a pretty mild winter and a quiet winter," MacLean said. "The strong winds and ice build-up of the last few days have caused our worst weather event."

MacLean said she did not know how many customers in the Rothesay area had their power interrupted over the weekend due to weather-related events.

The NB Power website reported 750 Rothesay area customers were without power at about 9:30 a.m. Monday. By noon, the number had dropped to 15 and by 2 p.m., only 11 customers were still left without power.

Nic Carhart, spokesman for Rothesay Netherwood School, said the private school's power went out on Sunday night and was restored at about 10 a.m. Monday.

He said it was an inconvenience for staff but it could have been a larger issue had it not occurred during March break.

On Monday, NB Power crews were out all over the province working to restore power, accompanied by crews to help remove wind-ravaged trees that took out lines. Getting power restored was difficult because the outages were spread out all over the province and crews spent a lot of time travelling from one site to another, MacLean said.

"We are restoring power and in some cases we are seeing new ones (outages). The wind doesn't help."

March's changeable weather should be obvious this week with a 60 per cent chance of flurries today, followed by clearing this evening. Sunshine is then expected from Wednesday through Saturday, with a high of 2 C forecast for both Wednesday and Thursday.

美国那边，都有人被冻死了。。。哀悼