It took a while, but winter has finally come to Kingston and southeastern Ontario. Fifteen centimetres fell between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon thanks to an Alberta Clipper.
In Kingston, the city’s public works department deployed its fleet of plows at about 10 p.m. Monday working through the night to make sure arterial and collector roads were as clear as possible for the morning commute.
“There’s a lot of planning that goes into fighting a storm,” Public Works manager, Bill Linnen, said. “We meet to discuss the forecast, and then we anticipate responding to a storm, or what we’re going to do when the storm hits.”
Linnen added he was expecting more snow to have fallen, and because of that, crews were able to tackle side streets a bit earlier than normal. In most cases, plows aren’t sent into those areas until after the storm has passed.
Even some private plow operators say calls to service were a lot lower than they anticipated them to be.
“We’ve got a couple, not too many. It’s not as much snow as we thought we were going to get,” plow operator, Ben Anger said. “Sometimes we go for 24 to 30 hours of just straight plowing.”
This current weather system should clear by Wednesday morning, but you won’t want to put those shovels away just yet – there’s a possibility of another sprinkling on the weekend.