Saskatoon snow clearing efforts ahead of schedule

City officials say work to clear Saskatoon roads of snow is a full day ahead of schedule.

Saskatoon received up to 40 centimetres of snow over the weekend, stalling travel in many parts of the city and closing a number of businesses and city facilities.

In an update Tuesday morning, the city says crews have exceeded initial estimates, which will allow residential snow clearing to begin Wednesday overnight instead of Thursday.

"Yesterday during the day and last night crews made really good progress and essentially completed all priority one streets," director of roadways Goran Saric said.

All major traffic roads are cleared of snow, with second and third priority streets expected to be cleared by Wednesday at midnight.

"Our initial plan was to complete them by Thursday (at) midnight, but we were able to accelerate some of this work. So that's good news," Saric said.

Once that work is completed, crews will move on to residential roads as well as giving on-ramps and bridges some added treatment.

Using a similar approach to a storm in December 2022, Saric says crews will begin removing snow in outlying neighbourhoods and core neighbourhoods simultaneously, and then working towards one another over the weekend.

A neighbourhood snow removal schedule will be posted to the city's website and updated regularly.

Leisure centres in Saskatoon remain closed on Tuesday, but should open on Wednesday for regular hours.

Residents who missed garbage, organics or recycling collection because of the storm have been rescheduled for pickup on Saturday.