What will Mother Nature bring next week? From snow to double digit temperatures, you never really know what kind of weather is in store for Regina which is why the city is preparing for everything.

Jay O'Connor with emergency management for the City of Regina always has his eye on the forecast.
 
“The cooler weather that we’re getting now is nice, it accommodates a little bit of melting and cooling at night,” he commented.

All the water from the melting snow in Regina has to go somewhere. In many cases it’s pooling in the middle of residential streets, which isn’t making driving or walking easy.

City crews are busy making sure that water is going where it’s supposed to: down sewer drains.

Supervisor of sewer and drainage operations David Jijian says there are four crews that go out with the task of clearing snow, ice and other debris from drains.

CJME got to go along with one crew in central Regina to see exactly how it’s done.

For the second time in as many days there's been a notable roof collapse in Regina.

Late Thursday afternoon Regina Fire, Police and EMS were called to the south side of the city where a roof caved in at a strip mall on Grant Road.

"There's no injuries, the unit that had the collapse was vacant, so we don't have any issues with trapped people, etc..." said Gerard Kay with the fire department.

There were also gas and water leaks that were quickly contained.

Evraz Place was the latest victim of a partial roof collapse on Wednesday.

President and CEO Mark Allan confirmed to CJME that it happened on the northwest portion of the property, right where the  commercial cattle barn and stock-man’s arena join up.

“A portion of the steel roof did fail due to significant ice load,” Allan said.

“There was no one in the building at the time, to the best of my knowledge. There are no injuries for sure.”

He said they’ve never had that problem before.

With a looming strike at Evraz Place, the City of Regina is moving its sandbag-making operations to a new facility.

"We were using a location on the Evraz-facility compound to build our sandbags, it was a convenient location for us" explained Jay O'Connor, manager of emergency management. "At this time, I understand that strike notice has been given, so we will be relocating our sandbagging operations to an alternate facility so that we don't run into any conflicts with our employees crossing another unions picket lines."

A slow melt is good news when it comes to flood concerns, but for the City of Regina, a slow melt also means a delay to fix potholes and clear streets.

"The melt is taking so long, we don't really know if it's going to be a bad year or a good year," said Trevor Kosolofski when talking about potholes.  The manager of asphalt services has about 80 staff ready to repair the roads, but standing water prevents the patching.

The management at Evraz Place is “deeply disappointed” the union representing employees at the facility is serving formal strike notice.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) Local 568 issued formal strike notice on Tuesday. The union has about 600 employees who work at the facility. They could all be off the job on Thursday.

Clearing catch basins of ice is the first line of defence to protect your street from flooding and the City of Regina wants your help.

This week the city added a new interactive map to Regina.ca showing where those sewer drains are located, so you can clear them to help avoid flooding.

As the days get warmer some Regina streets that haven't seen a plow for most of the winter are starting to become a real mess with slushy or frozen ruts frustrating drivers.

People are contacting the City of Regina about streets they find are badly rutted. (Below are tweets showing conversations between the City and residents.)

A looming strike at Evraz place is threatening to derail some major summer events in the Queen city.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has issued a formal strike notice, and workers at Evraz could be locked out as early as Thursday.

The workers' contract with the company that operates the major events complex ran out at the end of March in 2011.