It doesn’t seem like long ago that Kingston was knee-deep in snow. But after a mild week and heavy rains, the snow that had fallen is almost long gone.
Forecasts called for up to 25 millimetres of rain, that combined with the melting snow prompted the City of Kingston’s public works department to clear snow from catch basins, ensuring the melt had somewhere to go.
In the end, the city’s director of public works called this week’s weather a “blessing in disguise.”
“What this warm temperature has done for us is taken the volume of snow down considerably,” Damon Wells said. “And it’s given us a lot more snow storage along the roads and streets.”
But where things got tricky, is a sudden shift from mild to frigid. By dinner hour, temperatures had once again fallen below zero, with forecasts calling for the mercury to drop to -24 C by Saturday morning.
That means roads could become treacherous.
“There are going to be slippery conditions out there and we’ll do our best to address them as quickly as possible,” Wells said.
“But obviously, we can’t cover everything all at once.”