City councillor Shad Qadri provided the following update on snow clearing, from the City of Ottawa’s roads manager.
Heavy snow stopped at 5am with flurries continuing through until 11am this morning, we expect 2 cm this morning but the wind will make it look worse. We do expect fair skies with wind through the weekend with temperatures of -15 Celsius as a high.
Salt trucks and plows are continuing to work on the priority road network, road conditions range from slushy to wet with various turn lanes still partially snow covered. Priority sidewalks have also been plowed and salted and are partially snow covered but open and we will continue to clear. Day staff will pick up operations at 7 am and continue the clean up until 7pm.
We started plowing residential streets at 4:00 am. We anticipate to be completed by late-afternoon. Residential sidewalk plowing has started.
Night shift staff will be in at 7pm to finish any remaining cleanup of the arterial road and sidewalk network, plowing bus stops, activated signals, dead ends and cul de sacs, this will continue overnight and tomorrow day.
We will start to sand residential streets later today once priority beats are completed and finish with night shift staff, if time allows plow areas where parked cars have vacated and clean up corners. We will continue to scrape down and apply material to the residential sidewalk network.
We anticipate staff in this weekend to deal with blowing snow and clean up issues.