WESTLOCK – High winds and drifting snow led to extremely icy conditions on Westlock-area highways as RCMP dealt with a bevy of rollovers and vehicles hitting the ditch.
Westlock RCMP Staff Sgt. Al Baird said they received six calls alone March 7 about incidents on highways 2, 18 and 44 as high winds from the north, northwest pushed snow over the asphalt, then polished sections to glare ice.
Baird said the calls continued throughout the week and ranged from single-vehicle rollovers to a jackknifed semi near Pibroch — on Highway 44 north of Pickardville Thursday afternoon a minivan lost control and ended up a few hundred metres into a farmer’s field. Baird noted that while most of the chaos can be blamed on ice, some drivers lost control after hitting drifted snow.
“The roads went from being not bad early Monday, then with the blowing snow to being just crazy and iced up. We had reports of people even getting blown off the road — a gust of wind would come up and cause them to lose control,” said Baird March 10 as conditions started to improve.
“Today the roads are better, but with the wind there’s still drifting snow so there may be a good stretch of highway and then all of sudden conditions change. And if they hit a drift at speed it can cause them to go into the ditch or oncoming traffic.”
Baird reminds drivers that although we’re nearing spring and conditions should be improving, drivers need to remain vigilant.
“It looks like most people were slowing down … but there’s always a few who think they can continue to travel at regular highway speeds,” he continued. “I don’t remember seeing the conditions this bad for a while. Normally we get a blizzard and then for a couple of days the roads are bad and then it’s cleaned up. But this just seems to be kind of strange with the way the ice built up … for the first couple of days it wasn’t the snow, it was the ice.”
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