Large parts of the Maritimes came to a standstill Tuesday as a powerful winter storm blew through, forcing schools to close and leaving thousands in the dark.

The storm knocked out power for more than 35,000 customers across New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island at one point, and airports in all the provinces' major cities reported numerous cancelled or delayed flights.

In New Brunswick, the city of Moncton halted all services except for snow removal following their first major snowfall of the year.

West of there, in Fredericton, the snowstorm delivered a strange phenomenon to residents' yards — giant, naturally formed snowballs known as snow rollers.

Johanna Wagstaffe, a meteorologist at CBC's weather centre, described the formations as chunks of snow blown by gusty winds that create hollow, cylindrical balls.

"It's basically like forming a snowball that you'd make a snowman with, but it's done naturally," Wagstaffe said.

Several households in Fredericton found these giant snowballs, known as snow rollers, on their front lawns on Tuesday morning.

Thirty centimetres of the white stuff had already fallen on parts of New Brunswick by midday, with forecasts projecting up to 20 more by the end of the day.

The storm's howling winds and heavy snow also forced mass shutdowns on Prince Edward Island, where every flight out of Charlottetown Airport was cancelled and all schools closed their doors.

The system is expected to intensify as it moves toward Cape Breton overnight and then toward Newfoundland, where it is forecast to bring 20 centimetres to the northeastern areas on Wednesday.

Parts of eastern Newfoundland were still struggling to recover Tuesday after a weekend storm that downed power lines in what hydro crews described as the worst damage they've seen in a decade.

Road crews clean a highway in Montreal Monday.
(Peter McCabe/Canadian Press)

At the height of the outage, up to 100,000 customers were in the dark. Thousands of customers on the Bonavista Peninsula still didn't have electricity Tuesday morning and it could be up to a week before electricity is fully restored.

Landslide warnings in B.C.

Meanwhile, Ontario and Quebec were cleaning up after a storm barrelled across the two provinces.

The storm dumped 24 centimetres of snow on Ottawa over a 24-hour period.

In Montreal, where the system marked the first big snowstorm of the season, officials estimated snow cleanup could take days and cost $17 million.

On the West Coast, British Columbians were facing a different problem — rain, and lots of it.

A flood watch remained in effect along the south B.C. coast as another 30 to 40 millimetres of rain were expected to cause already swollen rivers to rise. The province has been hit by snow and rain in the past few days.

Fifteen homes in a community north of Horseshoe Bay, northwest of Vancouver, were evacuated late Monday as a local state of emergency was declared.

Officials worried loosened rocks, soil and tree roots in a large catch basin above the homes could overflow, creating a "debris flow" or slow landslide.

With files from the Canadian Press