Officials with the City of Toronto Transportation department say the city’s snowplows and salters are gassed up and ready to go as soon as the snow starts hitting the ground on Thursday. 

“We have all of our 200 salters ready to be deployed for our expressways and arterials, as well as our collectors and local streets the minute we start getting some of the snow.  The city is ready and prepared with 600 plows to be deployed the minute we have anywhere between 2 to 3 centimetres of snow on the expressways.  Once we reach 5 centimetres of snow on the arterial roads or collectors we will be deploying our fleet of plows.  And once we reach 8 centimetres or towards the end of the storm 8 to 10 centimetres, we will be deploying our plows on the local streets.”said Hector Moreno, Manager of Road Operations. 

Forecasters were predicting anywhere from 20 to 40 centimetres of snow in parts of the GTA including Toronto.

The city already began preparing for the storm on Wednesday, laying down brine on ramps, hills and at intersections. 

Meanwhile the City of Toronto has also issued an Extreme Weather Alert calling on shelters to relax any existing service restrictions.  Shelters are also being reminded that if there are no beds for a client, they are to allow the person to stay at the shelter until one can be found elsewhere in the system. 

Street outreach efforts will also be stepped up to try to bring some of the city’s homeless in from the cold.