For a second time in a two-week span, Kenora has been hit with a significant amount of snow causing crews to switch into overdrive.
From Monday night (January 31) until Tuesday (February 1) Kenora received just shy of 20 cm of snow after a westerly snowstorm blew through the area.
In terms of snow clearing efforts, Kevin Gannon, Director of Engineering and Infrastructure said crews are out of the reaction mode.
“Our teams have done a fantastic job. We were actually able to get into some of the residential areas for removing snow, which shows how well the team was working to manage the changes that were presented to them. We usually don’t hit residential areas for a good 24 hours after the event,” Gannon said.
Moving forward into Wednesday Gannon said the plan of attack is to continue cleaning up the residential areas, along with laying down additional sand.
As per the city’s priority mapping system for snow clearing, priority two roads, which are outlined in blue, crews will do their efforts to clear the road in 24 hours following an event.
Priority three roads, which are in green will be cleared once priority one and two roads have been plowed.
The winter conditions that Kenora faced forced Gannon to issue a Special Weather Event.
“We had multiple different conditions we had freezing rain, we had heavy snow periods and gusting winds. We wanted to make sure we had the ability to advise the customers that these conditions have caused poor conditions within the road system,” Gannon said.
The city declared a Significant Weather Event last month due to the January 18 snowfall.
Declaring such an event allows the city a little more time and leniency to get their service levels back to where they need to be to manage the snow event.
On Monday night the area received freezing rain, which along with the sudden drop in temperatures caused very slippery roads throughout the city.
“Within our organization, we use salt and sand on the roads. The majority of the salt we use is only in certain areas. It’s only effective up to minus 21, once it gets past minus 18 the effectiveness is not there.”
“Our efforts were just trying to get enough of the snow removed during that time so it couldn’t seep into the pavement and would be moving to the exterior of the roads. With the blowing snow, it was really upward battle for the team.”
Gannon concluded by showing gratitude for his team for their great effort, and customers for their patience and diligence on the road.