Victorians are routinely mocked by the rest of Canada for our collective inability to deal with below-zero precipitation. My only comment on that is that we seldom get the chance to practice driving in snow and slush and on the flip side, our infrastructure is not well-outfitted to deal with snow. There was a rumour in the 80s that Victoria had sold off all of its snow-clearing equipment but I’m not sure that’s true. Currently, for the City of Victoria (which serves not only its 78,000 residents but also many of the 330,000 in the surrounding municipalities) has the following:
We have 2 front mounted snow plows on tandem trucks, 6 underbody plows, 6 sanding/salting units, 1 front end loader, 4 backhoes, 1 bobcat with snow blade for sidewalk clearing. We keep approximately 300 t of salt in stock, and sand is readily available through our aggregate supplier. [source]
For comparison, Brantford Ontario (similar population to the City of Victoria) has the following:
Equipment available for snow plowing includes:
- One grader with wing
- Three loaders and wings
- Five wing trucks
- Six small reversible plows
- Three large reversible plows
- Six single plows
- Six rental tractors with wings (under contract) with operators
- Four tractors with wings
- 11 Tandem salters
[source]
A bit more impressive, I think. Of course, they have more need; Victoria’s average annual snowfall is about 28 cm whereas Brantford averages a little over double that at 61 cm. Sadly, I can’t find a listing for the equipment Corner Brook Newfoundland (with less than 21K in population) has access to, in order to clear its 430 cm of snow (wait, WHAT? 430 cm? And I was daydreaming about moving there??!) — I’ll bet it’s a lot more than either Victoria or Brantford.
As I’ve been writing this, the snow has been falling and the flakes are getting bigger and starting to stick. This has had the effect of the hashtag #yyjsnowpocalypse getting plenty of action on Twitter, although a lot of it is tongue in cheek. Rather than bore you with photos of the shrubs or our deck, I thought I would take a photo of a snow-dusted Elder God:
By the way, if you’re in the market, Cthulhu is for sale.
No snow here yet, darn it! But Bellingham did get hit. Maybe in the next couple of days…
By the looks of things, it’s just going to be damned cold but clear — I’m going to take the risk and finally wrap my fruit trees.