CHAT File Photo

By Gates Guarin

City crews beginning to mobilize snow equipment after fall snow dusting

Oct 24, 2022 | 4:18 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Medicine Hat and most of southern Alberta were treated to its first snowfall over the weekend, and while it didn’t last for very long, city crews have been preparing for the winter season and how to best take on the coming winter months.

The city is beginning to slowly mobilize its winter snow removal equipment, and is starting to monitor conditions in preparation for when the first real accumulation of snow hits Medicine Hat.

Once the weather really takes a turn for the worst, city crews will begin plowing roads and removing snow depending on the category. Category one roads include high priority roads, like hills, bridges and main arteries; category two roads include transit routes and school zones; and category three roads are where you can find residential roadways.

The city focuses mainly on traction control, as weather in the Hat has more freezing and thawing than consistent cold. This means the use of sand, chips or a sand/salt mix depending on conditions. Jeremy Petryshyn, manager of surface for city assets with the city, says while you can plan for almost every kind of weather, snow removal is very much a reactionary process.

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“We’re constantly looking at the wind, the temperatures, what type of precipitation we’re going to get, how that precipitation is changing,” Petryshyn says. “We’ll get a lot of times here where we go from rain to sleet to snow, so we’re constantly monitoring that. We look at roadway temperatures. So while we do a lot to be prepared, I would say a larger portion is monitoring as the storm is actually going on to know the best tool we’re going to use to handle snow and ice control.”

Petryshyn adds detailed planning goes into every winter season so as to not get caught waiting.

“We’ll be doing a number of refresher training with our staff, they haven’t done it for six months, so it’s going through and just making sure that we’re all understanding the process and understanding how to do it safely, and that’s an important part to us, and we’re really ramping that up over the next few weeks here.”

Petryshyn says when the time comes to remove snow from streets, appropriate signage for residents to move their vehicles will be enforced to allow road crews to clear the streets as much as possible.