By Scott Roblin

Snow storm presents busy day for local schools and police

Oct 2, 2017 | 5:39 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – All across the city on Monday, Medicine Hat residents have been treated to blowing snow, cold temperatures, and white-out conditions.

Around 5,700 customers have been affected over the course of day, with crews spread out from Ranchlands to the Medicine Hat Airport and everywhere in between.

Eight power poles were downed, and there is no word yet on when crews will be able to complete repairs.

Environment Canada meteorologist Dan Kulak said the entire region has been walloped by a low pressure system.

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“Medicine Hat is probably in one of the heavier bands of snow right now based on the radar, the information that we have,” said Kulak. “And, I think that the whole area is generally under a lot of snow.”

Various buildings in the city were left in the dark, with the Family Leisure Centre losing electricity for around two hours.

Some Prairie Rose School Division bus routes were cancelled before the morning rush, with Jenner School and Schuler School closing their doors.

Two schools were affected in the Medicine Hat Catholic School Division, with St. Louis School and St. Michael’s both losing power.

As for SD76, superintendent Mark Davidson said a number of his schools were left without power as well.

“We had six schools that had challenges with power,” said Davidson. “Three of them had intermittent losses of power, and three were down for quite some time, about two hours.”

Crescent Heights High School, Vincent Massey School, and Elm Street School were the most affected in the division with outages lasting a few hours.

Davidson said just before noon, SD76 decision-makers were close to notifying parents to pick up their kids.

“Power came back on at Crescent Heights and Vincent Massey School just about the time we were starting to make a decision,” he said. “Not about closing the schools mind you, but about asking parents to come and collect their children.”

Monday’s storm causing havoc on Medicine Hat roads as well, with nine collisions reported by Medicine Hat Police.

Traffic Unit Sgt. Clarke White said that included a crash on the Trans-Canada Highway, resulting in minor injuries.

“One of those was an injury collision on the TC Highway, so it’s higher than normal,” said White. “On average, if you were to average out through the year, we attend to about four and a half collisions per day.”

Police are advising against travel in city limits, but White said there are safety precautions you can take if you need to hit the roads.

“Make sure you’re driving for the road conditions,” he said. “Because, most collisions that we do find during this time of year are travelling too fast for road conditions, or rear-end collisions with people not giving themselves proper distance.”

According to Kulak, these wintery conditions should begin to die down sometime on Tuesday.

“The tapering off is probably going to be sometime tomorrow, but there could be some breaks in it in the meantime,” said Kulak. “But in general, the trend I think is going to be snow for much of today and tonight, and a gradual improvement on Tuesday.”

Temperatures will remain in the single digits for the next couple of days, but to the relief of many those temperatures should rise to seasonal averages by the end of the week.