Huge waves crashed over empty beaches and boardwalks, and campgrounds across the province sat mostly empty as Mother Nature washed out the long weekend plans for Manitobans.

Snow began to fall in the western part of the province around mid-day Sunday and made its way east.

According to Justin Hobson, a meteorologist from Environment Canada, 15 cm of snow fell in MacGregor, just west of Portage la Prairie, making it the area that received the most snow.

Other areas got 10 cm of snow including Treherne, Boissevain, Teulon and Arnes, just north of Gimli.

Hobson said that Winnipeg escaped the brunt of the snow with only 2-3 cm.

High winds gusting to 93 km/h brought down power lines in Winnipeg and around the province with outages reported from the parkland in the west to the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

“It was a big flash and you could hear the noise like a crack,” said Doug Lyons as he described a watching a power line come down in a neighbour’s yard in St. Boniface.

"I was more scared for the people that live in the house right there because I thought they were going to come outside so I quickly ran outside and told them to stay inside."

Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Scott Powell calls that good advice, and he urges anyone who comes across a downed power line to keep their distance and call Manitoba Hydro or 911.

The precipitation eventually turned to freezing rain and then snow in most places around the province as a warm moist Colorado low moving across the border from the south met up with a cold front from the north.

"There's an arctic ridge of high pressure moving down with a cold front ahead of it and when the Colorado low interacts with that, unfortunately it changes towards winter,” said Justin Hobson, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.

In a word, the long weekend weather was ugly, and it forced most people to move their plans indoors.

"Our original plan was to go golfing,” said Aaron Chagnon outside the movie theatre at Polo Park. “That was made earlier in the week but that obviously couldn't happen today. So we decided to see The Avengers."

Steve Davidiuk took his family to the movies as well.

"We might have been fishing on the Red or camping somewhere but we decided to not to camp because of the pending weather,” he said.

With temperatures barely rising above freezing and high winds continuing to gust from the north, it doesn’t look like Monday’s weather will allow people to salvage the long weekend.

Environment Canada said wind even likely blew over some semi-trucks on the highway near Brandon.