City crews anticipating routine clean up of mid-winter snowfall

Snow removal crews in Prince George will be busy over the next few days as we could see upwards of 20 centimetres of the white stuff between now and the end of Friday.

In addition, the city will also have to contend with bone-chilling temperatures that could dip into the minus thirties.

Roads and Fleet Manager, Jordan Wiseman told MyPGNow.com with the temperatures dropping, it should make for a more efficient clean up.

“The snow is lighter and is easier for us to move it around. With that being said, it doesn’t come without its own set of challenges – cold weather normally brings on equipment breakage as steel doesn’t like the cold weather. But, we often don’t see the effects of that until it starts to warm up.”

“It should be a relatively painless clean up providing there are no out of the ordinary circumstances,” added Wiseman.

Prior to the snowfall, crews are pre-wetting using a chloride-based solution on priority one and two routes.

“Some of the local roads and even the priority three’s that could see a high-volume of traffic, can compact that snow a little bit but with us pre-wetting the whole thing is that the snow will be able to come up quite easy and it won’t stick as much as it did with the warmer weather. The ambient air temperature does play quite an integral part of snow removal.”

PG is predicted to see a daytime high of minus five before dipping to twenty below in the evening. On the next several days, it will be much cooler with high bouncing between -14 and -19 while the low could be as frigid as -30.

In addition, parking restrictions are in place from now to April 15 of each year to help with snow and ice control operations:

• Priority Ones and the Hospital District – On-street parking is prohibited from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
• Downtown – On-street parking is prohibited from 12 a.m. to 7 a.m.
• Residential areas – On-street parking is prohibited from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Parking on the side of the street with odd house numbers is permitted from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. unless otherwise posted.

Illegally parked vehicles are subject to a $50 ticket per offence and/or may be towed.

When at least 7.5 centimetres of snow falls over a span of 24 hours we get what the City calls a “snow event”. If a snow event happens, we mobilize our fleet (plus any contracted equipment) for action once the snow finally stops.

• Priority 1 (red) and Priority 2 (green) routes are cleared within 48 hours after snowfall ends if at least 7.5 centimetres of accumulates over 24 hours.
• Priority 3 (grey) routes are cleared within 72 hours after Priority 1 (red) and Priority 2 (green) routes are finished.