‘Stay home if you can’: U.S. winter storm to hit the city Thursday

The incoming snowstorm wreaking havoc in the U.S., and expected to hit Toronto starting Thursday afternoon will be a “good test” for the city’s new snow clearing contractors, but questions remain about whether the city is ready for a heavy blizzard like the one that blanketed the city in January.

“It’s not supposed to be the Armageddon snowfall we had last year but it’s supposed to be significant enough that it will be a good test. I think we’re ready,” Tory said, adding that there are 1,100 pieces of equipment available.

The city is expecting a snowfall of between four and 10 cm starting Thursday afternoon and say crews are patrolling 24 hours a day to monitor road conditions, with salting beginning Thursday as snow accumulates.

The salters — many of which can now do double duty as plows — were getting filled and warmed up on Wednesday afternoon said, Vince Sferrazza, director of operations and maintenance of transportation services at the city.

What will be different this winter is that all sidewalks in central Toronto will be cleared, 95 per cent with machinery and five per cent manually where there are too many obstacles, Sferrazza said.

And rather than salting the expressways first, then arterial roads, then local roads, now that will all happen at the same time once snow starts to accumulate on the ground. There is specific equipment that will tackle seperated bike lanes, he added.

This is also not the first snowfall in the city, so the crews have been out already familiarizing themselves with the routes, he said.

“We just ask please, please, be patient,” he said.

The most intense snowfall will occur Thursday afternoon into early evening before it tapers off with a mix of snow and rain overnight and into Friday morning, according to Gerald Cheng, a meteorologist with Environment Canada. Some of the snow will be mixed with ice pellets. Near the lake, winds will gust up to 70 kilometres per hour.

“We’re not calling for huge amounts of snow,” Cheng said, adding that he’s not expecting a blizzard like the one that blanketed Toronto with more than 50 centimetres of snow last January in less than 24 hours. But it will still make a mess of the roads.

“Stay home if you can,” Cheng said. “It won’t be a fun commute back home.”

Tory dismissed concerns that have been raised, including in a CBC story Wednesday, that the contractor is not ready and that requirements for having GPS trackers on all plows so they can be followed on the Plow TO map are still not met.

“That’s what happens when you manage a big contract. City management have responsibility to ensure people and machines ready to go,” Tory said.

The few remained GPS installation will happen this week, and residents will be able to track the city’s snow clearing equipment on the map as they are deployed, Sferrazza said.

A scathing report on January’s snowstorm found the city was not ready and remains unprepared for increasingly common climate-change driven extreme weather events. In April city council ordered a report on an extreme weather response plan in the first quarter of 2023, with the majority of councillors declining to speed up the timeline.

The snowstorm was of a scale that hasn’t been seen in Toronto for generations that required the removal of 180,000 tonnes of snow, said Sferrazza defending the city’s response.

“I think we did a great job,” he said, but there could be improvements in communication both with the public and with other emergency responders.

The TTC is also closely monitoring the forecast, particularly how it could impact Line 3, the Scarborough SRT, spokesperson Stuart Green said.

The line may be replaced with buses should it need to close depending on the weather.

“We conduct proactive inspections of switch heaters and we have a work car with a large brush to sweep the power rail clear of snow and another with a snowblower attachment to clear tracks,” Green said. “Storm cars” can be run overnight to keep the line clear, something they also do for the open areas of Line 1 and 2.

Anti-icing measures have been done and extra staff and vehicles have been prepared, the TTC said Wednesday evening.

“We always advise leaving extra time and following @TTCnotices for service alerts,” he said.

Alyshah Hasham is a Toronto-based reporter covering city hall and municipal politics for the Star. Reach her via email: ahasham@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @alysanmati

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