The City of Saskatoon is launching city-wide snow clearing on residential and industrial streets beginning this weekend, to prevent severe ice and snow rutting.

In a news release, the City says as spring approaches, the warmer temperatures could mean some melting during the day and then freezing overnight, and with the current snowpack on streets, this could create severe ruts. To prevent deep ruts, crews will blade residential and industrial streets day and night, beginning in the outer areas and core of the City, working their way through the neighbourhoods. This is expected to take up to a week, and possibly some final cleanup could take a little longer.

Graders will clear packed snow from the streets and into the parking lanes. On the narrower streets where storing the snow isn’t possible, crews will remove it after blading. At the same time as this is happening, overnight snow removal on priority streets will continue.