Assiniboia welcomes Weyburn Red Wings with open arms during ammonia shutdown
9h ago
Billets were found for all Red Wings players in just four hours.
After snowing Tuesday evening, City of Regina crews were out in the early hours Wednesday morning to clear the streets.
The city said they had crews out at 4 a.m. salting and sanding the streets, beginning with high-speed roads like Ring Road and Lewvan Drive.
Norman Kyle, Regina’s director of roadways and transportation, said the city was set to have their trucks outfitted for the winter by Saturday.
“Some of the same equipment that we use for our summer operations we use for our winter operations,” he explained.
“They take the front plow off in the summer and they put it back on in the winter, and the sander boxes slide into the back of the trucks to be able to spread the salt and sand.”
Kyle said crews start making the switch at the beginning of October and install the equipment gradually.
The city had nine trucks out Wednesday, which Kyle said is normal for the type of snow Regina received, with eight to ten usually being sent out.
Kyle said the snowfall on Tuesday and Wednesday wasn’t enough to do a “systematic plow,” so snow routes didn’t have to be created.
That also likely won’t be the case this weekend, when about five to ten centimetres of snow is expected to fall in the Queen City.
The city is currently using salt and sand, but will be starting to go to the liquid anti-icing agents once the ground has frozen.
Kyle said the city has looked into other ways to keep the roads from becoming too slick.
“I know Green Bay, Wisconsin, actually uses cheese brine and it’s the salt in the cheese brine that helps keep the ice from forming on the roads,” Kyle said.
He said Regina doesn’t have something like that readily available in the city, but would look into environmentally-friendly alternatives.
Kyle said the city is still in good shape with their winter budget for 2017-18 because they didn’t have to remove a lot of snow in the spring due to a mild winter.