REGINA —The City of Regina is set for what could potentially be the biggest dumping of snow this winter, but there is still a lot of uncertainty as to how much the city will actually get.
Forecasts call for a major winter snowstorm to hit Saskatchewan Tuesday through Wednesday, but the forecasts show Regina on the edge of the brunt of that system and it is unclear exactly what that will mean in the amount of snow.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Daryl Massier, roadways seasonal operations manager, in speaking to reporters.
“Based on sort of the models that we’ve seen, we’ve seen anywhere from eight to 10 centimetres to 25 centimetres, so it’s one of those. We’ll wait and see what happens. The biggest thing that we’re concerned with is the 80-kilometre-an-hour winds. That’ll be our biggest challenge.”
As for how the City of Regina is preparing for the storm, Massier said they have “got all our folks in, all of our equipment is ready to go. We’re basically just waiting on the storm right now. Once the initial snow actually starts, then we’ll go into what we call the storm mode, which is basically ice control, trying to keep the streets as open as we possibly can, keeping emergency routes open, those types of things, until once the snow stops. Once the snow stops, then we’ll go into our systematic plow.”
They plan to have up to 100 people in, as well as private contractors that they bring in specifically for storms. They plan to have sanders out all day to deal with the slickness underneath the snow.
Massier is urging drivers to be cautious. “If they could give us about three and a half car lengths behind our equipment, especially our graders and our sanders, that’s a lot. That’s a great help for them to keep that far back. It just keeps them safe. It keeps us safe. It lets us do our job.”
He said with the snow, “obviously there’s going to be some traffic holdups. There’s going to be some snow and slippery sections on the streets. So what we suggest is just do your best to drive for the conditions.”
In terms of the amount of snow, the city will watch closely to see if it triggers a residential plow situation.
“If we receive 15 centimetres of snow in a single snowfall, that’ll trigger our residential snow plow,” Massier said.
Should a residential plow happen, it is dependent on a couple of things, he said. One is where the wind came from.
“If the wind comes from the north, obviously we’re going to start in the north end of the area because those are the areas that are going to be impacted the most. And generally work from outside in.”
As for predictions of a possible 25 cm of snow, if that were to happen it would be Regina’s biggest snowfall of the season, said Massier. Last year, the largest snowfall was 17 cm on Feb. 5, 2025.
