The Christmas song I’ll be Home for Christmas is taking on a new meaning for travellers stuck in airports after an ice storm battered parts of Eastern Canada.
Dozens of flights at airports across the Maritimes were delayed or cancelled on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year. On Monday morning passengers at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport were still contending with a mess of delayed flights.
Passenger Sheehan Kirkwood said getting home is frustrating.
"I've been away from my family for about five months now straight without seeing them. Christmas without them would be pretty heart breaking," he said Sunday night.
Peter Spurway, spokesperson for Halifax airport, said flights coming in from Toronto were delayed causing an uproar in the system.
Flight cancellations of both arrivals and departures are reported at airports in Saint John, Moncton and Fredericton, but some flights are reported as being on schedule.
Freezing rain warnings remain in place for the southern two-thirds of New Brunswick and P.E.I.
CBC meteorologist Peter Coade said he expects the freezing rain in southern New Brunswick to change to rain tonight as the trough of low pressure that has been almost stationary through the weekend to be pulled north today. Coade says that will also raise the likelihood of the snow in the rest of New Brunswick becoming mixed with or even changing to freezing rain later in the day.
The brunt of the ice storm that hit Ontario on Sunday is causing minimal damage in Nova Scotia.
The RCMP reported about two dozen collisions on Sunday, but there were no serious injuries.
“All of this brand of weather will come to an end overnight tonight as that low pressure centre moves across to the island of Newfoundland and Labrador taking this inclement weather with it,” said Coade.
At 7 a.m. AT there were around 5,000 NB Power customers without electricity in southwestern New Brunswick.
Crews in Nova Scotia restored the last cluster of outages early Monday morning in Amherst.