After a weekend of snow, Maple Ridge was hit with another blast Monday night, with even more on the way.
But municipal road crews are ready.
Snowfall was in the forecast Friday, so Maple Ridge road crews were expecting something – although maybe not the almost 20 centimetres that fell over the weekend.
“We knew there was a storm coming, so we put all our equipment out,” said James Storey, Maple Ridge’s director of engineering operations.
Friday delivered scattered flurries followed by Saturday, in which eight centimetres fell at Pitt Meadows Regional Airport.
On Sunday, another 10 centimetres fell, putting 18 centimetres on the ground at the airport, according to Environment and Natural Resources.
Maple Ridge saw 30 cm at its public works yard at 239th Street.
Storey said the city had 13 plow and sanding vehicles on the road from Friday to Sunday.
“We ran round the clock,” he added.
“We had everybody out. We ran 12-hour shifts. We’ve actually got all our equipment out now,” Storey said on Monday morning.
That evening and Tuesday morning, city crews did it all over again, as more snow blanketed the region.
And if that wasn’t enough, Environment Canada issues a winter storm watch for this Wednesday.
A Pacific warm front is expected to hit the area late Wednesday, initially bringing heavy snow followed by freezing rain.
Warmer temperatures and rain are then expected for Thursday and Friday.
The weekend’s wind and snow also brought down branches and trees which brought down wires which caused power outages.
“We had a lot of guys dealing with that as well.”
While B.C. Hydro crews repair wires, the city has to cordon off any area where they are down.
Storey said the focus on the weekend was on the major roads, such as Dewdney Trunk.
With those cleared and the weekend over, crews were able to move to side streets on Monday and Tuesday.
Since Friday, city crews have spread about 400 tonnes of salt on the road, which emptied supplies.
However, the stock of road salt was expected to be replenished early this week.
Storey said brine spraying was done all last week, up until Friday. But once the snow accumulates, the focus shifts to plowing.
“We have to focus on main routes because if we don’t, then we’ll lose those and we’ll have major problems.”
The goal is to keep the road surface bare and not allow snow to be packed into ice which would be difficult to remove.
The goal is the same in Pitt Meadows.
“We were able to get our priority roads down to bare pavement within 24 hours,” said Forrest Smith, director of engineering operations for the City of Pitt Meadows.
The city had four trucks on duty on the weekend and by Monday was starting to clean up side streets and residential areas.
Smith said the city has enough road salt on hand because it stocked up in January. This year has seen a shortage of road salt because of transportation and shipping issues.
“It’s definitely been the most snow we’ve seen since 2008,” Smith said.
Maple Ridge fire chief Howard Exner said it was a busy weekend with the department answering about three times the normal number of calls.
About 30 of those calls were responding to downed wires. Firefighters will try to secure the scene or make it safe while waiting for B.C. Hydro crews.
But often bystanders or residents will remove barricades or tape surrounding downed wires, putting others at risk, Exner said.
“It was like a windstorm, really for us.”
B.C. Hydro reported thousands of residents without power, mainly because of trees or branches falling on wires.