Overview of road and weather conditions in Calgary

You’d almost think the month of December is trying to make up for it being so warm and dry, all in a two-day period.

Calgary, and the rest of southern Alberta, woke up to a deep, fresh layer of snow Wednesday morning.

So far, Tara Norton-Merrin with the City of Calgary Roads Department, said they wont be implementing a Snow Route Parking Ban.

“I think we’re expecting a couple more centimetres of snow today,” said Norton-Merrin. “If that ends up being substantially more, then that conversation will be re-visited.”

She said more than 100 pieces of equipment are out working to clear roads, bike paths and sidewalks, but that heavy traffic is slowing the process, with plows just driving back and forth over Priority 1 routes all morning. This means Priority 2 and residential roads are pretty much un-touched.

“It takes 24 hours, after the snow has completely stopped falling, to clear the Priority 1 routes,” said Norton-Merrin. “At that point we’ll move on to the secondary routes, so if the snow stops falling, say at noon today, we’ll be done the Priority 1’s by noon tomorrow, and we’ll be able to move on to the Priority 2’s tomorrow afternoon.”

Meteorologist Andrew Schultz is estimating some parts of Calgary have already seen more than 25 centimetres of snow, with more on the way.

“It looks like a handful more, five maybe top-edge 10 centimetres,” said Schultz. “I would say the highest accumulation [is] still yet to come, over the next few hours, would be just west, maybe southwest of the city, but you’re not going to be giving that snow brush, or snow shovel a break this morning.”

He said we’ll finally see it clear up Wednesday afternoon, only to see snow return later in the day Thursday, which seems appropriate with the winter solstice arriving in the morning.

As for school closures, we’ve had two called so far, they are the Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School, and Edison School in Okotoks.