Staff memo.
As at 8:00pm, Saturday February 1st 2014
The City of Guelph has received 11 cm of snow thus far today. Weather forecast is calling for wet snow and possibly rain after 11pm tonight. Precipitation will dwindle to negligible amounts after midnight.
A decision has been made to commence a full residential plowout beginning at 11pm tonight. This work will take between 12-18 hrs to complete fully. Residents are asked to remove cars from roads as a courtesy immediately but fully understand it is the law from 2am – 6 am. This is necessary to allow plowout crews to conduct their work efficiently and effectively. As mentioned earlier residents should expect windrows at end of driveways as a result of this operation. Snow is likely to be wet and heavy. Contractors have been instructed to do their best to “even out” the size of windrows equitably across all frontages; however, this is not always possible given road design (ie. Curves and stretches of road with no driveways)
No flooding has been reported at this time. Public Works staff remain on watch.
Public Works have staff have the full compliment of snow/salter trucks out on all 8 main routes and 4 secondary routes. This will continue throughout the night. Heavy and steady snow have hampered efforts to keep the roads bare; however, staff are reporting wet slush but passable conditions on all main routes. Drivers need to adjust speeds and drive accordingly. Sidewalk plows have deployed and are working their way through the main routes, they will attempt to get into residential as soon as they can. Downtown staff and trail/parking lot staff have also been called in and are working.
Fire is reporting some vehicle collisions, EMS has had a few ambulance calls and have experienced some challenges with extracting patients from homes where driveways have not been shovelled. Guelph Transit are reporting no major interruptions or delays to their service at this time.
Next update is scheduled for 8am tomorrow morning. Staff