City crews ready to respond to Mother Nature

Regina’s winter maintenance crews could be busy Wednesday.

With the snow flying and the wind blowing, Regina’s roads could become a problem before the day is out.

Chris Warren, the City of Regina’s director of roadways and transportation, said the city will implement its normal snow removal plan if and when the storm develops.

“During a snow event, our goal is to keep major roads drivable and perform ice control at high-risk intersections,” Warren said before the snow started falling. “That means the focus is on roads with the greatest volumes of traffic, high-speed roads and emergency routes.”

The city’s plan for snowstorms calls for crews to work 12-hour shifts — “We would have crews in at all hours of the day and night,” Warren said — as they attempt to clear the streets in order of priority.

“Once we start to get snow and it starts to accumulate on the streets, we would have our ice-control crews out,” Warren said. “We would have our plowing crews out cycling through our major roads, some of the highest-volume roads (and) some of our perimeter roads.”

That latter group of roads could be affected if the wind causes drifting snow in open areas.

According to the plan, the process would then begin again.

“We’d be cycling through throughout that snow event while the snow is coming down to just try to maintain the network as best we can up until that snow falls,” Warren said. “Once the snow stops falling, we would basically hit a reset button.

“We would enter into what’s called our systematic plowing operations and then we would go back and we would re-plow all those roads, starting with our Category 1 and 2 roads, our major roads and just continue plowing those roads based on the amount of accumulation that we did receive.”

According to Environment Canada’s forecast, Regina is to receive between five and 10 centimetres of snow during the day Wednesday. The snow is to end in the evening.

Regina has enjoyed milder weather and minimal snowfall in recent weeks, but Warren said the dry roads that have been the norm in the city of late don’t change the crews’ preparations for a bigger snowfall.

“As the snow starts to fall, especially if traffic is moving on those major roads, we can start to experience slippery conditions,” Warren said. “That’s when our ice-control trucks would be out putting sand and salt down to try to maintain a good driving road network and just try to maintain those slippery sections where we can.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Andrew Shepherd