Heavy snowfall expected on southern Interior mountain passes

As much as 30 centimetres of snow is forecast for the Hope-Princeton, Coquihalla and other mountain pass highways through the weekend.

“A winter storm moving across B.C. will begin to spread snow to the highways over southern B.C. beginning Saturday afternoon,” says a special weather statement issued by Environment Canada today, Dec. 31.

“The snow will continue into Sunday and begin to ease off early Monday morning.”

READ MORE: Extreme cold weather to blame for flight delays at Kelowna airport

The affected highways are the Coquihalla from Hope to Merritt, Highway 3 from Hope to Princeton and from the Paulson Summit to Kootenay Pass and Highway 1 from Eagle Pass to Rogers Pass.

The forecast for Kamloops is for slowly rising temperatures through the weekend with a 30% chance of flurries starting Sunday and continuing into next week. Daytime highs will be around -6 Celsius.

Flurries are expected to start in the Okanagan on Saturday, turn to snow Sunday night and continue with a mix of snow and flurries into next week. Daytime highs are expected to reach -5 C on Monday.

Check Drive B.C. here for the latest updates on road conditions.

For the latest on the special weather statements along with weather watches and warnings, go to Environment Canada's web page here.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submitphotos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above.