THUNDER BAY — City crews are busy at work cleaning up after an early April storm that dumped about 25 centimetres of snow on the city.
Plows hit the streets early on Thursday to start working on the arterial routes.
Once they were cleared, workers moved on to residential streets, the goal to have them all cleared by the weekend.
“The snow started yesterday, just after lunch and started to intensify pretty good just before dinner. We had equipment out salting and sanding the roads. Once that accumulation got pretty high, we had plows out at 2 a.m. doing the priority routes,” said Ian Spoljaric, the city’s manager of roads.
“They were done those around 8 a.m. this morning and then they moved into residential streets.”
Spoljaric said it typically takes 72 hours to clean residential streets.
The storm presented plenty of challenges for roads crews.
“It does build up and we may have to make multiple passes on those priority routes, but with the warmer weather coming today or tomorrow, that may help get rid of some of that snow,” Spoljaric said.
The timing of the storm is actually beneficial in at least one other way, he added.
Because many of the snowbanks have already melted away, workers aren’t dealing with the challenge of narrow roads and finding somewhere to put the snow.
“Exactly. A lot of the snow had melted before this storm and the storm before that,” Spoljaric said.
“So there is a lot of storage space right now and hopefully with the warmer temperatures, that will start to come down as well.”
Sidewalk clearing is also under way, with the goal of having them cleared, if necessary, by the weekend. Again, warm weather could negate the need in some areas.
