Marcel Landry of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, dug a tunnel roughly 25 feet long through the drifts outside his home to reach his buried cars in February 2015. The storm that buried them dropped close to 90 centimetres of snow on the island in two days, and Landry's answer to the cabin fever that followed became one of the most shared winter clips of the year.
The February 2015 storm on Prince Edward Island
The winter of 2015 was a brutal one across Atlantic Canada, and the storm of Sunday 15 and Monday 16 February was among the worst of it. Up to 86.8 cm of snow fell on parts of P.E.I., driven by winds that reached hurricane force on the second day. Drifts piled up to the height of houses.
The island was cut off from the mainland. The Confederation Bridge, the fixed link to New Brunswick, closed on the Sunday and did not reopen until Tuesday, more than 40 hours later. Residents were told to stay home on the Tuesday while crews worked to open the roads, and another 10 to 15 cm was forecast for later in the week.
How Marcel Landry dug his snow tunnel
Landry told CBC reporter Krystalle Ramlakhan that he started digging out of "sheer cabin fever and boredom". His vehicles sat under a bank of snow roughly two storeys high, and shovelling from the top in that wind was hopeless. So he went in sideways.
"I just started digging in and in and in," he said. Working inside the drift kept him sheltered from the gale while snow was still falling. After about six hours of digging on the Monday, he had a passage around 25 feet long and up to about six feet high in places, with his cars waiting at the far end.
His fiancée, Stephanie Collicutt, summed up the result for reporters: "The cars have been uncovered to a certain extent."
From local news to worldwide video
CBC News posted its video report on 18 February 2015. The walk down the white corridor, ending at the bumper of a car, was irresistible, and news outlets around the world picked up the story within days. That same winter Boston was carving its own tunnels through record snowfall, so Landry's passage arrived at a moment when much of North America knew exactly how he felt.
The tunnel did not last forever. A few weeks later CBC returned to film Landry stomping out what remained of it. By then the packed snow had turned rock hard, and clearing it took real effort, but the cars needed a proper way out.
Digging out a buried car safely
Deep, wind-packed drifts are heavier and more stable than fresh powder, which is what made a tunnel possible at all. They can still collapse, and snowbanks beside driveways and roads are where ploughs push their loads, so it pays to keep tunnel play away from traffic. Before driving a car that has been buried, clear the exhaust pipe, every window and the lights, and make sure there is a clear route out.
Winter has plenty of other ways of turning a parked car into a talking point. Compare Faust’s lettering in fresh snow and the very different spectacle of a bass-powered snow-removal video.
Related reading
- An Edmonton Rainbow Ice Igloo Built by Family and Friends
- Ten Ice and Snow Designs: Hotels, Sculptures and Experimental Spaces
- Brendan Schaffer’s Snow Campfire: Flames Sculpted from Winter Snow
- Jay Venini’s Backyard Luge: A Sochi-Inspired Family Project
- An Ontario Ice Fort Built One Batch at a Time
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