Moose Jaw digging out from early-season snowstorm

As of Monday morning, city crews were still trying to dig Moose Jaw out of the mess the weekend snowstorm made of the roads.

Darren Stephanson, director of public works and utilities with the City of Moose Jaw, said the snow started Saturday night but really came down all day Sunday.

“We were as ready as we could be for a storm of this type,” Stephanson said Monday.

The crews were out all day Sunday and overnight but Stephanson said they had limited impact.

“We’d clear streets and they would be filled back in within an hour or two with the storm that was going on throughout the day,” he explained.

Stephanson said crews were just trying to keep traffic moving and get people out of blocked in areas so they could leave their homes if they needed to.

It’s pretty unusual for the city to get this much snow so early in the season — about a foot came down, according to Stephanson. He said the crews were getting a workout because the snow was so heavy and wet.

“So it’s a lot different than what you might get as a dump in the middle of winter when it’s more the lighter variety,” he said. “Due to the high water content and the weight of it, it’s causing a lot of problems around the city.”

The City of Moose Jaw had to cancel public transit Monday because of the snow, and garbage and recycle pickup were postponed.

“Downed trees are a big challenge right now around the city with the weight of that snow so our parks department is out in full force trying to deal with those issues,” said Stephanson.

Stephanson believes the cleanup will be happening all week, though they could get some assistance in that.

“I imagine Mother Nature’s going to help us out as far as some of this snow’s concerned before we can get to all areas of the city,” he said.

Moose Jaw dealt with a power outage for several hours Sunday. Stephanson said it was a problem at first when it came to traffic control and adding extra monitoring in facilities like wastewater treatment.

Late Monday morning, Stephanson said the city was asking for people’s co-operation and patience.

“It’s a pretty major event for any city to deal with, so it’s just going to take us some time to get through it,” said Stephanson.

SaskTel outage

The power outages ended up being a much bigger problem for SaskTel.

As of noon Monday, the Crown Corporation said customers in the Briercrest, Caronport and Tuxford areas were without cell, internet and landline service.

The Buffalo Pound Lake, Drinkwater and Marquis areas didn’t have landline service.

SaskTel blamed the problems on the commercial power outage in the area. It said at the time it would get crews out to fix things once the highways were better, but warned more power outages were possible if the power problems continued.