City of Edmonton officials said on Sunday that extreme cold combined with the recent snowfall is making snow clearance on city streets more challenging.
Environment Canada said Edmonton received between 12 and 16 cm of snow, as of Sunday morning.
“Our crews have been out on the road for the past few days; we’re working 24-7,” said Andrew Grant, supervisor of infrastructure field operations with the City of Edmonton.
“We’re up against some serious challenges because of the continuous challenges and the extreme temperatures.”
Plows and sanding trucks have been out since the snow began falling late last week.
“In these conditions, with temperatures as low as they are, we have two tools that we’re going to focus on. First is plowing the snow off the roads and then getting some sand and traction down,” Grant said.
The city does not use the calcium chloride solution when the temperature gets this low, as it does not work as well.
“Drive to the conditions,” Grant added. “When we see these extremely low temperatures, we see these ice formations around the city, our crews are out there. They’re on it, they’re applying sand where needed, but we are still trying to get a lot of the snow off the road.”
“This one is definitely a game of endurance. Our crews have been out there for several shifts now.”
The city did not say how many trucks and graders were on streets.
WATCH: Here’s Mike Sobel’s Monday, February 4, 2019 early morning weather forecast for Edmonton, Alberta and the surrounding area.
The majority of Alberta remained under an extreme cold warning Monday as temperatures remained dangerously low, and the company that runs Alberta’s power grid urged all Albertans to conserve energy.
The Alberta Electric System Operation sent a tweet Monday morning saying the province’s grid conditions were expected to be tighter than normal through the day.
To conserve power, Albertans are encouraged to turn off unnecessary lights and appliances, minimize the use of space heaters, delay the use of washing machines, dryers and dishwashers until after the peak hours of 5 – 7 p.m., use a microwave, toaster oven or crockpot instead of the stove and limit the use of kitchen or bathroom ventilation fans.
According to Environment Canada, this is the amount of snow that had fallen by 9:30 a.m. Sunday.
- Grande Cache: 50
- Kananaskis Village: 48
- Jasper: 33
- Rycroft: 30
- Barrhead: 20-30
- Swan Hills: 25
- Lake Louise Village: 22.5
- Grande Prairie: 22
- Rochfort Bridge: 18
- Banff: 15-17
- Nordegg: 15
- Slave Lake: 15
- Canmore: 10-15
- Evansburg: 10-15
- Edmonton International Airport: 14
- Edmonton: 12-16
- LLoydminster: 11.2
- Cold Lake: 10.8
- Devon: 9.5
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