City of Toronto preparing for biggest snowfall so far

A spokesperson for the city of Toronto says every piece of available snow-fighting equipment may be deployed to combat the snowstorm expected to hit southern Ontario on Sunday.

“That’s about 1,200 pieces of equipment,” said Hector Moreno, manager of Road Operations.  “The city has about 200 road salters and they will be deployed at various intervals, starting with the expressways, main roads, collector roads and then local streets.”

“We have approximately 600 road plows that are available and 300 sidewalk plows.”

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On Saturday, Environment Canada issued a special weather advisory calling for between 10 and 15 centimetres of snow in Toronto and surrounding areas.

READ MORE: Environment Canada calling for 10 to 15 cm of snow in Southern Ontario

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Subsequent advisories have indicated cities like Windsor, Sarnia and London may get up to 25 centimetres.

The bulk of it is expected to fall overnight, which is when Moreno said his crews will be doing most of the heavy lifting. “Midnight into 5 a.m. should be the busiest,” he said.

“Toronto crews will be out in full gear.”

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Eighteen anti-icing trucks have already applied salt brine to expressways, hills, bridges and intersections overnight as a pre-emptive step.

“Road plowing won’t commence until we’ve reached 2.5 centimetres of snow accumulation on the expressways, about five centimetres of snow on our main roads and about eight centimetres of snow on our residential streets,” Moreno said.

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He’s asking the public to allow for extra time during Monday morning’s commute, leave extra space for plows on the roads and avoid street parking if possible so the plows have a place to pile the cleared snow.

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