We’ll probably have a cold weather alert this week. Telling us to wear warm clothes, hats and gloves, check on old people and to protect ourselves from the extreme weather…It’s when it goes below 12C. Heh!
The CanaDoper Café (2012 edition of The great, ongoing Canadian current events and politics thread.)
Have you come across one of Toronto’s Metromelts in action? When I lived on Spadina, it woke me up every time we had a major snowfall.
Don’t tell them we keep our houses at 15…
I’ve seen them, but Toronto doesn’t get the regularity of cold and snow that Montréal does.
Yeh, when I was a kid I used to ask when we would move back to Montréal, for winters in the Golden Horseshoe were major suckitude – cold without the redemption of good snowcover and good terrain. I’d look at the photos of my folks frolicking in the snow in Montréal, the Eastern Townships and Tremblant, and wonder why I couldn’t have fun like that.
Now, that’s some serious snow removin’! Calgarians are all bitching non-stop about having to move their cars off the main routes when a “snow event” is declared here - it did my heart good to see that video start with a car getting towed out of the way. 
A car in my Sudbury neighbourhood was burried in a snowstorm while parked on the street. Then the plow came through that night, leaving half a car. Oops!
I drew a cartoon of that when I was on electronics school. I didn’t intend for it to actually happen!
That’s suspiciously good timing on your part, I must say. I think I shall have to resent you for it. 
The really remarkable thing about this anecdote, from an Alberta point of view, is that a car parked in a neighbourhood was damaged by a snowplow.
I’ve lived in Edmonton, Calgary, and Lethbridge; and I’ve never seen regular plowing of any residential neighbourhood. It would be nice if we did.
Here in TBay, we’d be shut down if it were not for plows. Last year a big highway plow got stuck on my street for a couple of days – it was so busy moving snow that it whited itself out(by ramming the drifts) and went into the ditch. (This year, however, has been a drought, so there has been little use for plows so far.)
This, quite frankly, boggles my mind. How could any city calling itself Canadian, and not situated among palm trees (you know who you are), not have defined residential-street snow removal? Even here in the soggy south of Ontario, we have the equipment and know how to use it, though municipal bean-counters rejoice every time a week passes without a Major Snowfall and we can leave the equipment shut off.
You know that people have skied in Hawai’i, right?
Oh, we have defined residential snow removal (at least in Saskatoon), it’s just defined in such a way that it rarely happens. Basically, unless they’re completely impassible, they don’t get plowed, unless they happen to fall under a priority route designation.
You have to remember that the Prairies aren’t just arid in summer, we’re arid in winter too. It’s very rare to get the kind of big dumps that are common further east. Residential streets spend most of winter covered in hardpacked snow with sand mixed in, and usually this isn’t a big deal unless deep ruts develop. Of course, I’m just saying that because I live on a Priority 2 street. 
As an ex-Ontarian, I’d like to see the “bare street” policy we had there transported to here. Plow all streets, always. At the very least, it would increase safety; and possibly lower insurance premiums.
And didn’t Calgary have a serious, multi-house fire a couple of years ago because the fire trucks could not get through unplowed residential streets to get to the fire? If my neighbour’s house burns, I don’t want mine to burn down too, just because the fire trucks cannot get here.
Hmm. Would have to pay for it somehow… maybe a provincial sales tax in Alberta?
Hell, I paid it in Ontario. I didn’t move here because of the lack of a sales tax.
Waaaaait a minute, you’re not a real Albertan at all, are you?
Do cities in southern Ontario actually plow and haul away all the snow off of residential streets? I thought they just pushed the snow to the side and waited a couple weeks for a warmish spell to melt the salted slush. I think prairie cities would be fine with sending a grader up and down residential streets, but then everyone would bitch about not being able to park for the next 4 months.
I wouldn’t mind a provincial sales tax in Alberta paying for snow removal in Ontario.
Yes, we truck away snow if it piles up so high that plows cannot do their jobs.
For a $145 fee, I believe!
They put up signsabout 12 hours ahead of time blocking out a 7h-19h or 19h-7h time block where the road has to be clear and the crews will come through. For large roads, they do one side at a time, to allow residents to still have a place to park, and they make certain city parking lots free during the overnight block. Throughout the hour before the crews show up, tow trucks go around and sound a particular distinct siren and will wait next to cars for a minute or two to allow people who forgot/are clueless a chance to get out there and move their car. If no one shows up, they tow it, and leave your car on a neighbouring street, somewhere within a 5 block radius or somesuch. You can go wandering around to find it, or wait until the next day when the license plate number appears on the websiteto tell you where they dropped it, with the ticket.
So, it’s not like people who get their cars towed don’t have more than enough warning to ensure that it doesn’t happen!
If the crews are done early, even if the signs are still up, you can park on the street again. You can tell if they are done - there’s no more snow
I don’t know about Ontarian streets, but in Montreal, they do, literally, remove the snow from every street. They dump it in a quarry, an old train yard, and various other empty lots around the city. It takes about 5 days to one week to do, assuming another major snowfall doesn’t make them start over on the major roads again. It’s an incredibly efficient process and one of the few city services I never hear people bitch about (other than the shovelling!). After a heavy winter, the piles of snow in the dump sites often stick around until July or so…