While Vancouver, on the Pacific coast, experienced one of its nine annual snow days, a far more familiar snowstorm blanketed eastern Canada on Wednesday.

A winter storm warning was in place for much of the region and travel was advised against.

Big flakes began falling on Tuesday afternoon, bringing more than 30 centimetres to Montreal by Wednesday morning, the deepest of the winter so far. Winds drifted the snow to nearer a metre in depth in many places. Nearly 250 flights were cancelled at Montreal’s airport.

In Ottawa, the nation’s capital, level snow depth rose to 83cm by Wednesday evening.

Winds gusting up to 70 kilometres an hour blew across Toronto and travellers described disruptions at the country’s biggest airport as “a nightmare”. Flight cancellations topped 400.

And in a maybe surprisingly rare step, Toronto’s administrators took the decision to close all schools.

According to Environment Canada meteorologists, the late winter storm was caused by a “Colorado low”, forming in that US state and picking up moisture and warmth from the Gulf of Mexico before heading north.