Highway closures way up this winter, more people relying on Highway Hotline

It has been a bad year for Saskatchewan drivers.

There have been many brutal winter storms, which have made for rough driving conditions. And, as a result, highway closures went way up.

From Nov. 1 to March 31, there were more than 1,900 closures. In that same timeframe last winter, there were just 384 closures.

The total this winter will have gone up with the massive storms in April.

Steve Shaheen, a spokesman for the Ministry of Highways, said that’s obviously a huge increase, but he can’t say for sure that it was a record winter.

“As best as we can tell (it is),” he said. “Obviously we weren’t keeping records from the 1970s. I believe that’s when the Highway Hotline first opened up with the call-in service.”

Either way, it was definitely a remarkable year.

The brutal weather isn’t easy to deal with.

“Those storms have brought heavy wind and snow, which creates significant challenges for crews. Wind is the major factor in the severity of snow and ice conditions,” Shaheen said.

“That, combined with temperature swings and fluctuations in the weather, has also made it challenging for crews because when the temperature drops significantly, you get that ice buildup.”

It’s also tough to get the roads ready, even when crews know a storm is coming.

“People often wonder ‘Why aren’t you applying salt or deicing chemicals?’ Well, when there’s strong ground drift or heavy snow, that will actually cause the snow to stick and crust, so it actually creates more treacherous conditions,” Shaheen explained.

It’s also very important to think about the safety of road crews.

“Once visibility is down, we will actually pull our crews off for their own safety, so once (visibility) is below 200 metres, those crews will not go out,” he said.

Since it was such a bad winter on the roads, more people relied on the Highway Hotline.

The online service had more than 13 million hits in 2021, more than double what it would usually get.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick