It was the first day of winter and Lower Mainland roads were clogged up with snow from a heavy storm that sat over the south coast for most of Sunday.

The Vancouver Police Department told the public to "stay at home and not travel unless absolutely necessary" because of poor road and highway conditions.

Around 20 cm of snow fell on the Great Vancouver area from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon.

And while many main routes were quiet on the last Sunday before Christmas, the ditches were full of enough vehicles to prove that many drivers still went out -- and drove badly. There were dozens of accidents around B.C.

"A lot of people that shouldn't be on the road figure that they're probably good enough drivers to be driving through these conditions, but they're not and they screw things up pretty good," said plow driver Don Wayne of Mainroad Contracting in Delta.

His advice was to not drive in conditions like this, but if it was important to take to the roads, take it slowly and leave lots of distance between cars.

Transit was busy but most buses and the Skytrain were moving -- albeit behind schedule.

At Vancouver International Airport, however, there were long queues, delays and cancellations.

"This is a heavy snowfall. We're probably an eight out of 10 in terms of the effect on the airport," said Don Ehrenholz of Vancouver Airport. "We do have crews and chemical and teams out there to de-ice so that we can keep the place open. But with this type of snow safety is our first priority."

Many of the problems were due to bad winter weather in other parts of Canada, he added.

Many travellers opted to stay at hotels near the airport in the hopes of flying out early on Monday.

And for those who stayed at home, B.C. Hydro said power use was at near record levels. Spokesman Dag Sharman asked people to cut back on electricity use where possible, especially at peak times.

"It just means there's a stress on our system and that increases the potential for things like outages caused by overloading. So if people can refrain from using the dishwasher or doing their laundry between the peak hours of 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. that would help alleviate the stress on our system and we'd really appreciate the help," he said.

The snowfall is expected to taper off overnight.

With a report for CTV British Columbia's Stephen Smart