City road crews and equipment have been working hard this week, combatting extreme temperatures and numerous snow falls. (CHAT News File Photo)

By Chris Brown

Extreme weather making snow removal difficult for crews

Dec 22, 2022 | 1:45 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Extreme cold couple with several recent snow events has caused havoc this week on city streets and the highway through Medicine Hat.

So much so that police said that travel was not recommended in the city on Wednesday. There have been multiple accidents and issues in the Kin Coulee dip this week, an area that falls under provincial jurisdiction.

Manager of surface for city assets Jeremy Petryshyn, whose responsibilities include overseeing the clearing of city roadways, says crews have been working continuously to plow and sand the roads. He says they’ve set up nighttime snow removal operations this week, starting in downtown and hospital areas and are now working on collector roads.

He says some operations are taking a little bit longer due to the extreme cold, which is hard on people and the equipment.

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“The roads … it’s harder to get down to bare pavement because of the amount of snow we’ve had and how cold it is,” Petryshyn says. “Even when we’re going and doing our snow removal our graders are having to work so hard to cut that snow that’s turned to ice just because of the extreme temperatures.”

Once at least some of the snow has been removed, the sanding trucks are brought out. The city uses a chip material that is a little bigger and has a lot of angular fractures to it, Petryshyn says.

“So it grabs into the ice pretty good and then we use a chemical on it as it’s coming out, a calcium chloride and so what it does is it actually works a little better into the ice so it’s not just sitting on top,” he says. “It actually creates a little bit just that little bit of melt so that the aggregate actually works into the ice and stays in place.”

The cold snap is ending tomorrow and by Christmas Day daytime temperatures will be around zero degrees and remain there for the next week.

The potential for snow on the roads melting during the day and freezing overnight will present a new set of challenges for Petryshyn and the crews.

“If we see a melting and then a refreezing, what that’s going to be is traction control so we’ll be using a combination of our chips, maybe a sand salt mix in certain areas,” he says. “So we’ll just be doing it with a granular material and providing that traction for the travelling public.”