Hurricane Hannah Brings Heavy Rains To Maritimes

Buy an ad on DigitalJournal.com

It has been raining here for the better part of the past two days. The winds have calmed and the rain more a light drizzle now but the air is humid and close.

Saint John NB received almost 140 mm of rain by noon Sunday, while dumping more than 100 millimetres of rain in southern New Brunswick, which took the brunt of the storm.

Environment Canada made the following reports:

Saint John 142 millimetres of rain,
Point Lepreau got 141 millimetres,
Parrsboro, in northern Nova Scotia, received 104 millimetres,
while in Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown got 87 millimetres.

I've seen it pretty bad, but not really this bad," said Bruce Zwicker, trying to get his rental van through a watery Charlottetown street. "It's a lot of rain very quickly."

Hanna is now heading to Newfoundland.

The rains were so sudden and strong that driving was dangerous, forcing emergency officials to urge motorists to stay off the road or pull over.

Part of the New Brunswick Southern Railway was washed out and crews erected traffic barricades on main stretches of city roads early Sunday, affecting drivers planning to use Rothesay Avenue, McAllister Drive, Westmorland Road, Fairville Boulevard and Kennebecasis Drive.


"You go around the barricades, you're on your own," Sgt. Robert Buck with the Saint John police said.

"You take your chances going through the puddles. The police department will not be helping you."

In Nova Scotia, RCMP reported several incidents after cars hydroplaned on wet roads in the heavy downpour.

"The shoulders of the roads are getting extremely soft," said Alex Benoit, spokesman for the RCMP in Truro.

NB Power was reporting outages in New Brunswick affecting about 270 customers in Sussex and a handful in St. Stephen and Fredericton.