Digging out after Tuesday's record Calgary snow

Springtime in Calgary: The city's outdoor plant life was beginning to come to life as temperatures rose and the days got longer. Not many people were ready for another blast of winter, and then April 19 happened.

Snow fell throughout the city but the northwest got hit the hardest. Wednesday home owners began digging out. In Panorama Hills Nony Aristore was using a snow blower to clear his driveway and sidewalk. It's deep, heavy snow that he hasn't seen like this in the 25 years in the community.

"Really hard without my, I call it my four by four or my snow blower oh I can make it, while a snow shovel cannot," he said.

Nargis Somani and Christine Redekopp are neighbours and got their daily work out in together first shovelling Somani's driveway and then Redekopp's. The two can't believe the shift in the weather.

"We have a little bit of a suntan last week it was 22 degrees out," said Redekopp. "Now this, its mind boggling, how is this global warming?"

RESCUING VEHICLES

Phil MacDonald works for AAA Towing and is working overtime to rescue all the vehicles that ran off the road in the storm. Even as the sun came out some of the roads in the city were still covered in ice. And MacDonald responded to at least 15 calls Wednesday.

"Every single kind of car, there was that semi truck on McKnight Drive last night right, every exit is messy all the roads are horrible," he said. "So anybody who's driving too fast for conditions right now is going to end up in the ditch."

Greg Griffiths,  the head professional at Fox Hollow Golf Course, said the season started early but now has ground to a halt. Griffiths took his dog for a walk on the course to inspect it and says in some spots the snow was up to his knees.

"Everybody's canceled for the next two days," he said. "There's a lot of people crossing fingers for Friday, although the temperatures still (looking like it will be) pretty cold on Friday, it's looking like it's going to get better Saturday, Sunday and phones are ringing pretty good to book people."

ROADS

The city's roads department was all set to sweep gravel off of Calgary streets but workers had to pivot to clear now Tuesday.

"This snow wave was kind of remarkable in the sense that it actually occurred overnight," city spokesperson Chris McGeachy said. "The warning didn't come in till very late in the day so we had crews out working on the snow overnight and (we're) monitoring the situation."

McGeachy says the city is assessing the roads day by day on when to begin street sweeping again.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the city sent out an update about street cleaning.

"On Thursday April 21, 2022 The City will postpone some previously scheduled residential street sweeping operations due to the recent snow event. Sweeping that was scheduled for the communities of Altadore, The Hamptons (North Portion), Skyview Ranch (East Portion), Bowness (West Portion), Scenic Bow, Thorncliffe (South of 56 Avenue), Greenview North and Fonda will be rescheduled to June 2022.

"Sweeping in most of Calgary’s south communities will resume. Sweeping in Kingsland, Fairview, Aspen Woods (East portion), and Bridlewood (North Portion) will proceed as scheduled on Thursday, April 21, 2022.

"Community parking bans will be in place from 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Citizens can find out when their street is scheduled for sweeping by visiting Calgary.ca/sweep and using our address lookup or signing up for notifications. Sweeping that is rescheduled due to the weather will be scheduled to a later date in June 2022. We encourage citizens to sign up for street sweeping notifications at Calgary.ca/sweep."