City of Lethbridge crews are cleaning up the streets as a winter storm continues in the region (Lethbridge News Now)

By Justin Goulet

Lethbridge crews keeping busy tackling snow clean-up

Nov 28, 2019 | 12:52 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – When residents woke up in Lethbridge Wednesday morning, the first thing they saw outside was snow, and lots of it.

City crews are at work cleaning up roads and sidewalks as the white stuff continues to fall and a Winter Storm Warning remains in effect for most of Southern Alberta.

However, Lethbridge’s Transportation Operations Manager Adam Campbell said this week’s storm hasn’t hit the city as hard as the storm on September 30.

“This one’s a little different in that there’s less snow, probably about 60 percent or half, somewhere around there, but it’s [snow] much lighter. That stuff in September was very heavy and caused a lot of problems for anyone trying to navigate through it. This stuff is much easier to drive around in, but it might cause some drifting problems later on,” he said on Thursday morning, adding they’ve noted about 25 to 30 centimetres of blowing snow in the last couple of days.

Workers are currently clearing priority one roads, major routes used by residents.

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Campbell said they’ve fielded about 10 to 20 calls from people not being able to physically get out of their property due to the snowfall, but unfortunately, areas like residential alleyways are not a part of the priority one system.

“I think we’re really hoping for the snow to stop…so that we can get the priority roads done, call them done and start working on priority two, priority three and just getting all the city to the level that we want to see it at. Right now, we say the roads are passable, but I would like them to be better,” he said.

The biggest challenge from the drifting snow, Campbell said, is that crews will plow and clear a street just for it to be covered in snow shortly after. They have also been sanding as part of their clean-up efforts, but again, the continuously falling snow just covers that up.

“Once we get all the roads plowed and the snow stops, you should see a lot more sands and some salt on the roads to kind of help clear things up and get things less icy.”

Campbell said the west side is where they’ve received a lot of their phone calls from, noting the West Highlands, Copperhead, Sunridge and Riverstone areas as problem zones.

He advises residents to work together and help each other out, to watch out for other drivers and pedestrians and to make sure vehicles are properly equipped for the winter driving conditions.

Overall though, he said he’s happy with the work crews have put in and continue to do, even if the snow this year has been a little bit more than they anticipated.

As far as the budget goes, Campbell said because there’s been more snow they had planned for, they are “definitely going to be a little over budget this year.”

“I believe as of October, we were at about 70 percent (of the budget) if I remember correctly and then with all the snow clearing we did in October, November and now, we’ll definitely be a little bit over,” he explained.

“Technically we’ve had about double or triple (amount of snowfall) what we would annually plan in budget for, so I don’t know if it’s incredibly out of line.”

In total, he added that there are usually 10 plows working the streets at any given time, along with one grater.

PARKS DEPARTMENT

David Ellis, the City’s Parks Manager, said this week’s snowfall hasn’t impacted trees as much as September’s snow did.

That’s because, as Campbell mentioned, the snow this time around is much lighter, so it’s not sticking to the trees.

“The challenge with this kind of snow that lasts for a few days is we have a priority system and we work on that priority system – we finish priority one after it quits snowing, and then we move on to priority two. So, we haven’t even started priority two until it stops snowing, we finish priority one and then we move onto parks and pathways,” Ellis said, speaking on the priority snow clearing system.

He added that they’ve cleared city buildings, downtown areas and sidewalks three to four times already, and crews will keep doing that until the snow stops.

As for anyone that might want to skate in an area like Henderson Lake, Ellis said that although it might look solid, the ice is definitely not solid enough yet to do so.

Fortunately, some relief looks to be in sight, as Environment Canada is calling for sunshine come the weekend.