After a few days of above-zero weather across Alberta, the temperature dropped Thursday and snow fell overnight, causing roads to ice over and become slick for the Friday morning commute.
Between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m., Edmonton police said 20 crashes were reported on city streets, including two hit and runs and two injury collisions. Between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., there were 169 collisions on Edmonton streets, including 10 injury collisions, 15 hit and runs and 144 property-damage collisions.
In hopes of getting ahead of things for the morning commute, the City of Edmonton said it sent out road crews at 3 p.m. Thursday.
“Going into the night, we used 100 per cent sodium chloride. And as the temperature dropped, we switched to a 75 per cent sand and salt mix to provide a little bit of traction for the morning commute,” Andrew Grant with the city’s infrastructure field operations said Friday.
“It did perform as we expected. We are down to bare pavement on a lot of our arterials and we are working our way into the collector bus runs throughout the city.”
Police also said between 6 a.m. and 6:50 a.m., four vehicles were reported stolen and all were left running with keys inside.
Environment Canada issued snowfall warnings Thursday afternoon in northwestern Alberta. As of Friday morning, the warnings were in effect to the west, south and east of Edmonton, as well as in central Alberta around Red Deer, Ponoka and Innisfail.
By Friday afternoon, all weather warnings across Alberta were dropped.
READ MORE: Heavy snow on the way for western, central Alberta; travellers being warned
School boards across the Edmonton region and northern Alberta experienced bus delays and issued cancellations.
Buses were not running in several areas, including at Parkland County School Division, Wolf Creek Public Schools, Wildrose School Division and STAR school division in Leduc County. Black Gold School Division also cancelled buses in New Sarepta.
WATCH: Here’s Mike Sobel’s Friday, Nov. 16, 2018 early morning weather forecast for Edmonton, Alberta and the surrounding area.
Environment Canada said the heavy snow was due to a low pressure system moving southeast across the province. By the time snow ends late Friday morning, 10 to 15 centimetres of snow are expected, although isolated pockets of 20 centimetres are possible, the national weather agency said.
Environment Canada issues snowfall warnings when 10 centimetres of snow or more are expected to fall within 12 hours or less.
While Alberta has received several snowfalls so far this year — the first happening at the beginning of September — fresh snow and poor road conditions always get people talking on social media.
READ MORE: You don’t always need snow tires. But where you do, here’s what experts recommend
One of the best ways to track locally hazardous driving conditions is from local viewer reports. The #yegtraffic hashtag is often used by Twitter users reporting traffic issues within Edmonton.
If safe to do so, share your weather photos with us via the Global Edmonton Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can also post updates from your community using the hashtags #yegwx and #abstorm.
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