City of Lethbridge crews making progress on snow removal, just need a little help from Mother Nature

“Anytime a member of the public calls in that their roads are drifting, that’s the problem when we have this light snow and the winds blowing it around. It tends to drift and plugs up intersections or other areas. We’ve always got a drift control, call it in and we’ll deal with that. The key thing is right now our P1s and P2s, and most of our bus routes, are all done with plows and we’re working on the last of the P3s.”

They’re maintaining all priority routes by sanding and city crews were able to take most of the windrow on 4 Ave S away, two blocks left between 4 Street and Scenic Drive S.

“It’s only supposed to snow two to four centimetres on Saturday, so we’re not anticipating a bunch of snow, but downtown right now is a little bit snotty. It’s not enough to remove yet, other than 4th Ave where the buses go, but if it snows more than forecast, we might do a full round in the downtown of windrow, snowblower and a line of trucks,” Juell added.

After the next snowfall crews will reassess the need to conduct snow removal in the downtown.

It’s also not forecast to get warm over the next week or so, but outside of Saturday, it’s not forecast to snow a lot more either.

“We’re waiting for mother nature to decide if it’s going to snow more, or not at all.” Juell continued. “The snow removal is so much more expensive than plowing, so we’re waiting for the weekend to see what happens and then we’ll deal with it come Monday in the downtown for snow removal.”

Then any of the other P3s or even P4s they deal with will be using a sander plow, or if there’s drifting happening then they’ll start with the spot removal of snow with loaders or trucks.

As far as the snow clearing budget is concerned, no additional money was added this year other than the usual increase of between three to four percent for growth, according to Juell.

“Last year we were $2-million over on a $4.5-million budget, which is really substantial, and MRSR picked up that difference. January is when our new budget cycle hit, and basically, we start off on the fresh year, but we don’t want to spend it all in January/February/March when it does start snowing.

“So far, we’ve had a good January and a fairly decent February other than the cold weather. We’re hoping it stays the same but who knows what March and April bring for us, and even next winter. That’s what we’re trying to do, balance our budget out, and basically, try to be a little bit under budget if possible. That way if Mother Nature starts snowing big time, we can use it if we need too,” Juell stated.

When it comes to the downtown getting cleaned up further, it all depends on whether we see any further accumulation.

“If we don’t see any further accumulation this weekend and it stays cold, we’ll do that spot removal just like we did on 4th Avenue, but if it snows a lot more than the weather predictions are forecasting then we do a full round of snow removal and clean up every street and every avenue in the downtown,” Juell said, adding that’s where they spend the big dollars.

However, they anticipate doing that two to three times a year in the downtown anyway, so they just don’t want to do it too early.

“Because if we do that and we get heavy snowfall in early March, then we would have to do it a second time unnecessarily.”

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

City of Lethbridge crews making progress on snow removal, just need a little help from Mother Nature

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