Heavy snowfall over the weekend blanketed Salmon Arm with a grand total of 34 centimetres – more than 13 inches - over two days.
That was an unlucky number for many motorists, with vehicles ending up in the ditch, getting stuck, or colliding with other vehicles. Roads were treacherous throughout the region, with drivers warning other drivers online to just stay home.
Staff Sgt. Scott West at the Salmon Arm RCMP detachment says local police responded to seven collisions over the weekend, with other incidents reported where officers didn’t attend.
The good news: “There were no fatalities as a result of the collisions and many of them involved single vehicles leaving the road. It was a routine weekend when we receive a heavy snow.”
West also reports the Trans-Canada Highway between McGuire Lake and the 30th Street intersection at the top of the hill was closed temporarily Sunday in order to clear transport trucks which had spun out on the hill and then stopped to chain up. Traffic was also single lane on Tank Hill at times Sunday to accommodate a stuck semi or two.
Weekend crash reports throughout the region included two semis in the ditch between Salmon Arm and Sicamous, which crews were pulling out Monday. Even a snow plow was reported in the ditch about 22 kilometres up Sunnybrae Canoe Point Road.
Related link: Trucks spin out on hill in Salmon Arm
Along with treacherous roads, many households in Salmon Arm and throughout the Shuswap were without power Sunday night, some into Monday and even Tuesday.
The heavy snow downed branches and trees, taking power lines with them.
“We had 48 separate outages over the last 24 hours that impacted over 12,000 customers in Shuswap/Sicamous/Salmon Arm,” stated Jen Walker-Larson with BC Hydro in an email Monday afternoon. “Crews have been working 24/7 since the storm hit to restore power and currently there are 590 customers remaining without power.”
Shovellers and road crews may get a reprieve until Thursday, when more snow is forecast.
Meterologist Cindy Yu at Environment Canada says two weather systems affected by a cold front to the north rolled through southern B.C. over the weekend. The first one on Saturday brought 15 cms or six inches of snow to Salmon Arm, while the second wave on Sunday brought 19 cms (about seven inches).
She said unsettled weather is in the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday, “but we’re not expecting anything like the weekend.”
A new weather system is expected to arrive in the late afternoon or evening Thursday.
“Temperatures should be cold enough – it may start with wet snow. Thursday night, we’re certainly expecting snow – five to 10 centimetres overnight.”
Another two to three centimetres may fall on Saturday and Sunday, she says, but nothing like last weekend.
Although January is normally the second snowiest month for Salmon Arm with about 56 cms of snow falling, this year, not so much. But last weekend certainly boosted the numbers.
Yu says a total of 41 cms of snow have fallen this month, 34 over the weekend.
However, more precipitation has fallen this month than normal, with 72.5 millimeters of both rain and snow, as opposed to the normal of 64 mms.
And the temperature has been a little warmer. The average daytime high temperature this January in Salmon Arm has been one degree Celsius, she says, slightly higher than the normal daytime maximum of 0.7 degrees. The normal minimum temperature in January is - 6.6 degrees, while this year it’s -4.8.
The weekend’s snowfall was normal in that it generated lots of complaints about roads.
While the highway through town is the responsibility of private contractor JPW Road and Bridge Inc., city crews are responsible for the rest of the roads.
Rob Niewenhuizen, the city’s director of engineering and public works, says due to the ongoing snowfall over the weekend, crews were able to concentrate only on commercial areas –mainly downtown – and priority routes such as arterial and connector roads.
“We were not able to start any subdivision clear-up due to the continued snowfall on Saturday and Sunday which required crews to go back over the priority routes.”
He also says only two staff members work on roads on Saturdays and Sundays, so six people were called in, all of them on overtime. However, “city policy says we can’t do overtime work in subdivisions on weekends,” he explained.
So even if there had been time to do subdivisions last weekend, the overtime policy would not have allowed it.
Niewenhuizen says crews will be applying magnesium sulfate this week if it rains so the roads don’t get icy.
@SalmonArm
marthawickett@saobserver.net
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