A pair of snow plows work to clear First Street SW, near the Windmill Garden Centre, on Friday afternoon.--NEWS PHOTO GILLIAN SLADE
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
The city says the snow clearing challenge this week is the sheer volume that can’t just be pushed aside but must be removed.
About 60 cm of snow fell between Saturday night and the early hours of Monday. There was more on Tuesday night.
Jeremy Petryshyn, manager of operations for municipal works, said the categories of focus have not changed but this storm meant moving to remove snow “quicker than we have ever in the last seven years.”
By Friday morning a total of 1,000 truck loads of snow had been removed from roads using 20 contractor trucks, he said. Since Sunday the city has had five graders out on the roads most of the time.
If you are waiting for your residential street to be plowed though, you should probably just wait for the Chinook instead.
Most residential streets have on-street parking and a plow dumping snow on the sides of the road will effectively remove all of that parking. Even if you sacrificed that parking there would be other challenges. Petryshyn says compacted snow will not melt as easily in a Chinook and ultimately would be impossible to remove by truck later.
“We will continue doing traction control. That’s our main piece on residential roads,” said Petryshyn. “We won’t be doing plowing.”
For major roads the snow is being plowed into the middle and then loaded up in trucks and carted away to two approved and monitored sites: 30th Street SW near the airport and northwest of the Family Leisure Centre.
After focusing on only applying anti-icing agents and grit on hills on Saturday night, plowing and sanding began Sunday focusing on hills and boundary roads, which are considered category one.
Petryshyn says the snow ended about 2 a.m. Monday and by 4 a.m. crews were out plowing all category one roads including Dunmore Road, Maple Avenue, Division Avenue and hills. He says not all bus routes are considered category one.
Some roads downtown, such as First, Second and Third streets, have no space for snow to be pushed off the road and require full snow removal. By midnight on Monday a snow removal crew had been mobilized.
“We’ve been hauling 24 hours a day, with three crews working 12-hours each,” said Petryshyn.
Snow has been removed from around the hospital, downtown, Ross Glen Road from Dunmore Road to Turner, S. Railway Street from Second to Fifth streets and 20th Street NE. More roads were being addressed Friday.
He says 16 or 28 school zones have already been cleared and snow removed.
First Street SW had only been “flat bladed” but graders were present Friday and will be reassessed next week for possible snow removal.
“We are going to continue the snow removal to midnight on Friday and then reassess and look at what we are going to start doing on Monday,” said Petryshyn.
