City of Saskatoon officials are applauding a new winter road treatment that stood up during the recent frigid weather.
The city is using coarse salt sprayed with magnesium chloride on its roads this year.
“With the magnesium chloride, we can lower that effective temperature by quite a bit and then with the coarse grain salt, we can make it so it’s not susceptible to wind blowing it off,” Brandon Harris, the city’s roadways director, said.
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“I really believe that there will be very few conditions that Mother Nature can throw at us where we won’t be able to do something.”
READ MORE: City road crews make changes as Saskatoon gets ready for the winter season
Salt on its own loses much of its effectiveness when temperatures drop below -12.
Officials say the new solution completely removed ice from roads during recent days with extreme cold temperatures and strong winds.
“We applied the sprayed salt pellets to a thin sheet of ice that formed on Queen Street and the high winds were unable to blow the salt off the road,” Harris said.
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Officials said they will continue to use pre-wetting techniques on high-traffic streets, where they said wet, heavy sand sticks more effectively in extreme cold conditions.
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