Greater Sudbury digging into preparations for spring thaw

It only takes a few days of warm temperatures for people to start thinking about the spring thaw.

Work in preparation for the spring thaw in Greater Sudbury actually started a couple of weeks ago.

City operations manager Randy Halverson said the first thing crews did was scoop out waterways clogged with ice.

"We remove ice and snow out of some of the major outfalls, some of the larger ditches that are going to be taking water from alongside roadways, alongside properties and moving them toward the creeks and river systems," he said.

They've also been busy scraping down snowbanks in the downtown and digging out catch basins.

Lower water content in snow

As for how big of a melt the area can expect, Conservation Sudbury's Carl Jorgenson said the snow may be deep, but it isn't dense, and should melt slowly.

"When you go out into the bush, get away from the urban area, get up into the other parts of the watershed and actually measure what is in the natural setting, we don't have as much water content, we actually have more snow," he said, noting there's about 30 centimetres of snow.

"It does seem like there's a lot of snow there, but again the water content is lower than it was this time last month and it's much lower than it's been on average for the first of March."

Below-freezing nights and just a little precipitation should make the snow melt slowly, he added.

Currently, the Ramsey Lake Skating Path and Queen's Athletic Oval in Sudbury are closed due to weather conditions.

The city isn't sure if the Adanac Ski Hill will open later this week.

Spring officially arrives March 21.