THUNDER BAY — The City of Thunder Bay roads division is rolling out all available resources to cope with a significant snowfall event.
According to Environment Canada, the Colorado Low that arrived in the Lake Superior region Sunday has the potential to drop as much as 50 cm of snow on the city by Tuesday night.
Forecasters expect Thunder Bay will receive a minimum of 25 cm.
The manager of the roads division, Ian Spoljarich, said Monday morning he plans to keep his crews out clearing at least the priority routes throughout the storm.
"I'm hoping it's coming down slowly enough over the next couple of days that we can keep up on the arterials, the collectors and transit routes. And if we do kind of get a break in it, and we have a chance, we will get into local residential streets."
The roads division was preparing to take some units out of service in preparation for spring and summer, but Spoljarich said: "We're always prepared . . . the equipment is ready to go."
The city has access to almost 60 pieces of snow-clearing equipment.
These include 22 graders (both city-owned and contractor-owned), three loader/plows, nine plow trucks, 15 sidewalk plows and nine sanding units.
"What we call a full plow event got triggered last night with the amount of snow we got," Spojarich said. "So the goal is to have all those resources out, and we're pretty much at full complement right now."
