East of Woodstock on the 401. Do *not* drive it if any serious amount of snow is forecast. And even if the snow is light, watch out for the black ice. Seriously.
I spent Christmas Eve, from about 9 pm to about 2 am, with several hundred other people in the service centre in the snow belt there some years ago. My travelling companion and I were in his commercial van, and we'd picked up a family whose car had gone off the road into the ditch, and just about froze to death in the extremely sub-zero (Celsius) wind on the highway doing it. We also picked up half of a retired couple from their car in the median; the husband insisted on staying with his car, and the wife spent two hours pretty much in terror at the service centre until he was towed out and drove in. People die in weather like that without too much trouble.
The 401 between London and Windsor can also be treacherous of course, in that case usually because of fog -- the road itself is straight and flat.
http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/media/top10/1999_e.htmlOn the Friday before Labour Day, dense early-morning fog enveloped sections of Highway #401 near Windsor, contributing to one of the worst road disasters in Canadian history. The horrific accident killed eight people and injured thirty-three others. In all, the chain-reaction pileup destroyed 82 vehicles, many of them fused together in the intense heat. Just moments before the crash, visibility was reduced to about a metre by the sudden occurrence of dense fog just after sunrise.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/News/2004/09/03/613960.htmlA farmer and lawyer who lives along the 401, Kirk Walstedt is walking from his house to a pen to feed his peacocks when he hears a crash, then another and another.
Walstedt runs to his pickup and drives toward the highway, approaching a fog bank so thick and low it looks like a white tunnel. Above the fog, not much higher than the roofline of a tractor-trailer, black plumes of smoke rise.
He hears them before he sees them, people screaming.
"It looked like the worst airline disaster you ever saw."
Farmer Dave Phillips is eating breakfast at 8 a.m. when he hears what sounds like thunder.
When the sounds continue, Phillips walks up an overpass above the 401. Bright orange flames leap above a fog bank. He runs toward the wreckage.
"It was like seeing a movie, a crazy war scene. Mangled cars and people screaming," he says.
Anyhow, March varies widely. In early-spring or low-snow years, the snow will be pretty much gone. In late-spring or heavy-snow years, there will still be snow on the ground, but probably not much falling. This weather site says:
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/stlauren/environ/en_clima.htmWhen the mean daily temperature goes above 0ºC, spring has arrived. In southern Ontario this happens in early March. It comes later on in the same month in Quebec, depending on where one is located. For example, Quebec City typically receives more snowfall than rainfall in March whereas the reverse is the case in Montreal. The mean daily temperature hovers near the zero mark in the entire region in March. By April it increases between 3 and 6 degrees Celsius, and in May the region's average is above 10ºC. The days begin to get longer also. From March, April to May, the average amount of sunshine in a day goes from five, six to seven hours. Furthermore, the old saying "April showers bring May flowers" doesn't apply in the region. Surprisingly, April is one of the driest months of the year. High wind speeds and thunderstorms are also prevalent.