Saskatchewan continues to dig out from major winter storm

Snow drifts across the province were big in the wake of the weekend’s winter storm, but some may have been Biggar than others.

Tanya Lehnert — a resident of the community that’s about an hour west of Saskatoon — went to let her dog out of her house on Sunday morning.

“There was quite a bit of snow on my back step,” she said. “It looked pretty deep, but I couldn’t tell how deep.”

She took her dog and put her on the step.

“The snow was over her head,” Lehnert said with a laugh. “I swiftly took her back in, and then I had to shovel her a spot so that she could go to the bathroom.”

Lehnert said that as of Sunday morning, one to two feet of snow had fallen on Biggar. The sidewalk on her block was plowed by a friendly neighbour, which lightened her shovelling load.

On Saturday night, her dance studio rehearsal was cancelled because of the storm.

“You couldn’t see anything,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone walking, or even driving around town in the blizzard.”

Lehnert teaches voice lessons in the community, and many of her students are performing in the Biggar & District Music Festival.

Students are starting to practise on the stage before the festival kicks off, and some of Lehnert’s students almost did not make it to practice because of the blizzard-like conditions.

“(One of them) wasn’t sure how she was going to get out of her driveway,” said Lehnert. “I couldn’t get out of mine to go and pick her up.”

Everyone — including the accompanist — trekked across town to make it to the Biggar Majestic Theatre for rehearsal, and then also made it home safe.

Saskatoon crews still on the streets

According to the City of Saskatoon’s update at 3 p.m. on Monday, there were 33 graders, 10 sanders and eight plows working across the city.

So far, 95 per cent of all Priority 1 roads — including streets like Circle Drive, Eighth Street, 22nd Street, College Avenue and Idylwyld Drive — had been completed.

Crews were moving on to Priority 2 and 3 streets, including school zones, transit routes and main streets in neighbourhoods. City employees are to be monitoring 24 hours a day for icy areas.

The city cautioned that some road lanes will be reduced because of the volume of snow that fell.

According to the city’s estimates, 35 centimetres of snow accumulated between Saturday morning and Sunday evening.

The city is to provide another update at 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Regina responds

Tyler Bien, the City of Regina’s manager in roadway operations, said close to 10 centimetres of snow fell on the Queen City between Saturday and Monday.

City crews started a systematic plow Monday morning, with crews plowing major thoroughfares and putting down ice-control materials. The plows will then move to Category 2 and 3 streets.

“That systematic plow takes 48 hours to complete,” Bien said. “Most people would have seen that we were out on the road and a lot of those Category 1’s were plowed first thing (Monday) morning and we will start getting to the Category 2’s and 3’s after that.

“We do have that full 48 hours to make sure everything is plowed and opened up for everybody.”

The city also will plow sidewalks and alleys, and snow routes are in effect until Tuesday at 6 a.m.

However, Bien noted that residential streets won’t be plowed because the city didn’t get 15 centimetres of snow.

“We are dealing with some of those high winds, so there are some areas of the city that tend to get blown in from the open areas that they’re around,” he said.

“We do have crews out and about taking care of some of those locations that do get more snow than other areas of the city, so be aware that there may be some plowing activities just on roads that do fall outside that Category 1 to 3 streets but are seeing a significant amount of snow being dropped on those streets.”