Forecasters warn of slippery, slushy Wednesday night

The Ottawa-Gatineau region is getting varying blends of snow, rain, ice pellets and freezing rain after the sun sets Wednesday.

Freezing rain and snowfall warnings from Environment Canada covered much of the area that night. In Ottawa, freezing rain had started by 10 p.m. at the international airport.

On Thursday morning, freezing rain warnings remained for Ottawa-Gatineau, the Cornwall and Hawkesbury areas, Lanark County and communities north of Gatineau.

All ended around 10 a.m. except north of Gatineau and allexpected precipitation to finish by the afternoon.

There were also early-morning fog advisories in the Belleville area.

The freezing rain warnings for communities such as Belleville and Kingston called for about five millimetres of ice to build up starting Wednesday evening. Anything sticking around into the day Thursday was expected to be light.

A snowfall warning forRapides-des-Joachims in the western Pontiac ended around 7 a.m. Thursday.

Throughout the region, people who leave home are asked to be careful on slippery surfaces.

Weeks of warm interrupted by snow

A warmer local autumn and start to winter that included record-breaking high temperatures at the end of December has been interrupted by double-digit centimetre dumps of snow.

Nearly all the 96.4 centimetres of snow at the Ottawa airport in December came from four systems. At the same time, the average daytime high that month was 0.4 C.

Ottawa's daytime high has been above 0 C for eight straight days and is forecast to make it 10 Fridaybefore falling slightly below the freezing point for the weekend and beyond.