The Saskatchewan Highway Hotline cameras show icy conditions on a bridge near St. Louis on Highway 2 as of 4:40p.m. (Highway Hotline)

By Nick Nielsen

Most Highways covered, some closed

First large snow fall sweeps across Saskatchewan highways

Nov 19, 2024 | 4:51 PM

Snow plows, tow trucks, and tire shops are busy today after almost the entire province of Saskatchewan woke up buried in a thick layer of snow Tuesday morning.

Most roads around the province are showing either covered or partly covered conditions with the exceptions of the western side of the province around Lloydminster and the Battlefords, and the very southeast corner of the province around the towns of Carnduff and Moosimin.

As for the most covered areas, Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, and Prince Albert are all showing covered conditions, with Humboldt and Watrous reporting around 30 cm or one foot of snow.

John Bodnarchuk runs Dr. John’s Towing in Prince Albert and deals with most of the towing outside of Prince Albert. He said that his calls did go up throughout the morning, but the rural areas weren’t as bad as in the city.

“Even last night with the side roads not being maintained as good as the highways, a lot of people were sliding off the roads because of the snow pack on the gravel,” he said.

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If you are in need of a tow truck because of the icy conditions, Bodnarchuk said that there isn’t much you can do to help the tow truck operator before they arrive. The best thing you can do is stay in the vehicle, but there is something you should watch for as it runs.

“There’s not much they can do other than if their radiator gets packed with snow. If they’re having to wait a long periods of time, they should watch their temperature gauge so that they don’t overheat their car. Stay in the car, stay warm, and keep in contact with the tow truck company they call.”

Another business seeing a major increase in calls is the tire business. With the sudden dump of snow, there is a rush of people trying to get their winter tires installed. Owner and operator of OK Tire in Prince Albert Colin Fraser said that their calls have gone up about 40-50% since yesterday.

“People live in such a busy and hectic schedule that they sometimes forget to put the winter tires on and them like today, everybody’s phoning because everybody wants to get them on, but unfortunately all the tire stores have been busy for two or three weeks to a month putting their tires on, and we’re booked out two to three weeks right now. So it’s difficult to get customers in and you certainly don’t want to turn anybody away, but unfortunately you only have so many hours in a day, so many man hours, so many hoists, and you only get through so many vehicles of course. It’s discouraging to us as a business, not to be able to work around everybody schedule and get everybody done today but it’s just next to impossible to get that done.”

If you were to call today, Fraser said that you would be waiting at the very least until Thursday of the following week just to get your tires put on. While some people are scrambling to get their winter tires put on though, Fraser added that winter tire awareness programs seem to be taking effect and people are starting to put them on sooner.

“We’ve been in business right here in Prince Albert for 25 years and over those 25 years, it’s taken us a really long time to educate consumers and customers on the value of getting your winter tires on early and over the last two-three years, it’s becoming more relevant to see that our customers are actually being more proactive in coming in earlier, especially customers with stored tires. They know they have to do it. We send out reminders and the customers come in and then when it does hit a snowstorm like this, it increases how busy we become, but the fact is that a lot of our customers already have their tires on for their changeovers that they previously had last winter. So now we have the opportunity to get customers into new tires and to make sure everybody safe and driving safe throughout the city and on the highways.”

To avoid wrecking winter tires, they should not be installed until the overnight low temperature is consistently hitting -7°C.

If you’re heading out on the road during a winter storm such as this, always refer to the Saskatchewan Highway Hotline before your trip to check on current road conditions.