Worst storm in recent history

Or so they tell us at least. If this is the worst that Toronto gets, then it's fine with us.

So Saturday/Sunday we had a major storm front come across north east North America. It dumped a lot of snow across north easter United States and eastern Canada. Generally in Toronto it amounts to about 25-30 cm, but due to the strong winds it is generally in drifts much deeper.

They do a decent job of keeping the main roads plowed, but all the plows do is push the snow to the side of the road. This is great for cars, but pedestrians have to break out of their fort of snow and push through or climb over the 4 foot piles of snow to cross the road. I should have bought some rope and crampons. The drifts mean some places there is only a couple of cm of snow, which makes it easy enough to get around on the major routes, but it can be many feet deep in some places as we found out on our little walk about. Incidentally in the photo below our building is the one in the middle of the photo, to the left of the Rogers Centre.
The quays by the lake are starting to freeze over now with large bits of ice making its way into the harbour area. The ducks love it as it gives them somewhere to sit while on the water, but I don't think the local sailing club is going anywhere. In the second photo below that is one the Toronto Marine Fire Stations in the background with the fire boat moored alongside (not the little one, but the larger one behind it.)

One the lakefront there is a large outdoor ice-skating rink, though I may have mentioned that before. Anyway, they had to clear off a lot of snow to get access to the benches.