REGINA — The City of Regina provided an update on its snow-clearing progress Thursday.
Daryl Massier, City of Regina roadway seasonal operational manager, said the city was hit with between 20 and just over 25 centimetres of snow during the Tuesday night into Wednesday snowstorm.
This has been confirmed as the heaviest snowfall of the winter so far.
As of Thursday, the city is currently focusing on Category 1 and Category 2 roads. The city categorizes roads based on traffic volume. Category 1 roads include Ring Road, Albert Street and Lewvan Drive, while Category 2 roads include McIntosh Street and Pasqua Street.
“Right now, we’re sitting at about 85 per cent of our CAT 1s are completed and roughly 30 per cent of our CAT 2s,” said Massier.
The city is also focusing on neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Regina impacted by strong winds.
“During those storm events, we dedicated graders to those areas,” noted Massier.
After 48 hours of a snowstorm hitting the city, crews will start clearing Category 3 roads, which include Sandra Schmirler Way and Angus Street.
As for residential roads, Massier said the city won’t clear those until next week.
“We’re still working on a couple of things just to get the dates down, but it’ll be next week.”
Challenges posed by weather
Before it started snowing, Regina saw a few hours of freezing rain, which created a layer of ice under the snow.
Massier called this an issue for sanding.
“Once we clear that snow, there is that little, that shiny piece of ice that you really can’t scrape off with the grader, so we use our ice control people to try and alleviate that.”
Blowing snow also caused some roads to become plugged, but Massier said crews were able to get ahead of the clearing process due to less snow falling than predicted.
As crews continue to clear snow, Massier asked drivers to give plows room to do their work.
“Try to stay back three and a half car lengths or more from our equipment as it’s working. Things like that allow our sanders to do what they do.”
