Saskatchewan has been blasted with snow throughout the weekend and into Monday. In Saskatoon, the accumulation accounts for one-third of the snow received in total this winter, according to Environment Canada.
Clean up started before sun up Monday morning with equipment clearing parking lots, graders hitting city streets and people clearing their property.
“It’s a pretty big workout,” Angela Trefiak said.
“It’s hard to get traction to push the snow.”
Trefiak is clearing roughly 15 to 20 cm of snow as a result of two snow events over the weekend. Environment Canada’s warning preparedness meteorologist John Paul Cragg said March is typically a month with a lot of precipitation.
“We start to see warmer air in the states build up but we still have really cold air up in the arctic and when those two clash we can get these big systems and we get something called a Colorado low,” Cragg said.
This system led to poor highway conditions leaving truck drivers storm stayed in Regina over the weekend.
“Oh, I’ll be at least a day behind now, at least,” Wes McLaren, who waited out the storm, said.
Motorists in Saskatoon were struggling to get around, including a city transit bus.
“Right now, we have about 70 pieces of equipment on the road which includes graders, plows, sanders and sidewalk plows,” Brandon Harris, the City of Saskatoon’s transportation and mobility director, said.
Plows begin clearing city streets as soon as the snow starts to fall. According to the city, Circle Drive will be cleared a total of nine times by the end of this snow event.
Equipment is working in tandem as part of a new initiative of the city.
“Just on Circle Drive alone we’ve cut down our response time after major snow events by about six hours … and we’ve saved about $50,000 per snow event just by switching to that tactic.”
It’s a tactic Trefiak wishes she too could apply to her clearing efforts.
“There’s lots of snow to push and my shovel is pretty small,” she said with a giggle.
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