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Warm weather halts winter road Galit Rodan Northern News Services Published Wednesday, February 8, 2012
"We opened on the first, we closed on the second. We opened on the third and closed it on the fourth. The weather's been an adventure so far," said Richard Bulley, acting Yellowknife dispatch supervisor for the winter road. The winter road is constructed principally to allow heavy haul trucks to access and service diamond mines north of Yellowknife for about 10 weeks each year. Before Saturday's closure, convoys of four trucks were being dispatched out of Yellowknife to surrounding mines every hour, said Bulley. The suspension of operations Thursday and Saturday "was just preventative more than anything else," said Ron Near, director of winter road operations for the Tibbitt-to-Contwoyto joint venture. Warm temperatures led to a softening of the road's portages, or overland segments. The portages "just start to melt and the water runs and trucks dig trenches and it's just a rebuilding process," said Bulley. "So better to leave them alone when it gets that soft and the guys can rebuild them properly." Near said public traffic on the ice road could not be regulated but "we encourage people not to go on it because private individuals can also cause damage to the road." Operations recommenced Sunday, said Bulley, with four big rigs leaving Yellowknife every 20 minutes. Despite a large backlog of trucks, things are now running smoothly, he said. The maximum temperature Feb. 2 was -1.3 C, according to Environment Canada. The temperature Feb. 4 reached 3.3 C at 1 a.m., shattering the previous record of -6.2 C, set in 2011. "This is unusual," said Bulley. "Usually the weather's a lot more consistent and it's just a nice steady increase in the ice and everything goes smooth. This has been a strange year all over."
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