Blizzard throws city for a loop

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/01/2010 (5918 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If your vehicle has been stuck in a ditch or snowdrift since Monday morning, just what part of "travel not advised" did you not understand?

The police said don’t travel, a Manitoba highways spokesman said don’t travel, CAA Manitoba said don’t travel.

The good news is our first blizzard of this winter is long gone this morning and, by now, most main roads and even the worst residential streets should be passable.

The bad news? It’s frigid again, and that blizzard left behind a mess, from a lot of snow to abandoned vehicles now on a long waiting list to be fetched and towed.

"We had gusts up to 80 to 90 kilometres this (Monday) morning, bringing visibility to zero," said Environment Canada meteorologist Sandy Massey. Winnipeg got 20 centimetres of snow, thanks to the Colorado low that came up Friday from the U.S. and nailed southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, and then came after us.

Parts of Manitoba got 30 cm, with The Pas topping the list at 42 cm.

But it was the wind that ruined driving conditions, forcing Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation to close the Trans-Canada Highway Monday from Headingley to Portage la Prairie, and Highway 75 from the city to Emerson.

Most roadways outside the urban centres were labelled "travel not advised" during the blizzard.

That blizzard has moved over central Ontario today and is headed for Quebec tonight.

About 400 trucks, graders and front-end loaders were out clearing Winnipeg’s regional streets Monday night, and plows also punched a driving lane down the snowiest residential streets.

That could be a quick-fix measure while the city decides whether a full-scale residential plow is needed. City spokesman Ken Allen said the public works department will assess the situation later this week.

If a full-scale residential plow starts, Winnipeggers will get to play around with a new interactive website showing exactly when each street will get done.

Meanwhile, treacherous back lanes will get plowed starting today at 7 a.m., so you might come home to a windrow blocking your driveway.

The first blizzard of 2010 may be over but the trade-off is four days of below-seasonal temperatures, with daytime highs not much above -20 C, said Massey.

"We’re looking at below normal through Friday," she said, though, "It looks pretty dry for the next few days."

Most rural school divisions cancelled school buses and closed schools. City schools were open, but buses didn’t run.

CAA Manitoba had a waiting list of at least three hours, most of those calls "stuck calls," said CAA Manitoba’s Randy Holyk.

The motor league was not going outside the Perimeter Highway Monday. Drivers in the ditch or stuck in a snowdrift on the Perimeter Highway might get a ride, but not a tow. "We will try to get there to rescue them, but their vehicle will have to wait for another day," said Holyk.

A truck and a car collided on Highway 9 just south of Selkirk Monday afternoon. The Trans-Canada east of the city was closed at Highway 12 near Steinbach Monday morning for several hours after an accident in the westbound lanes.

The city unleashed its plows on main roads at 7 a.m. Monday and had sanding trucks operating throughout the city.

"It’s focusing on the main routes, bus routes, and collector streets. They take up to 80 per cent of our traffic," Allen said.

Travel was not advised anywhere in southern Manitoba on Monday, said Neil Gobelle, Manitoba highways information manager.

"The ‘travel not advised’ is because of lack of visibility, because of wind and blowing snow. Open areas are really bad," said Gobelle. He said there were many icy patches.

There were literally dozens of vehicles in ditches Monday morning. Headingley RCMP traffic division said that conditions were "very, very poor" on the Perimeter Highway.

Airline passengers may have had trouble getting to the airport, but flights out of Winnipeg were on time.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Plowing map online

THE blizzard that just walloped Winnipeg could also launch the first test of the city’s newest gadget — an interactive online plowing map.

In past years, if a full-scale residential plow was underway, Winnipeggers were forced to scramble to move their cars off their front streets overnight or risk getting a ticket. That hassle could last days because the city had no way of saying which streets were slated to be plowed on a given night.

That’s all changed thanks to a new snowplow mapping system the city says is the first of its kind in North America.

At 2 p.m. every day, the city will post a map of streets slated to get plowed that night. If your street is highlighted in red, you must move your car or you will get a ticket. If your street is black, it means plows have already cleared your block or they are still a few nights away. You can park out front worry-free.

The online map should result in fewer tickets for motorists and faster plowing because city crews won’t have to tow cars or manoeuvre around them.