A snowball fight begins in Lahti – contractors reduce snow piles to prevent water and dirt from remaining on the streets

In the foreground is a large gray puddle of water, on the edge of which rises a pile of gray slush.  in the distance you can see pedestrians and a yellow ambulance, a dark car and traffic lights.
The weather turned wet on Tuesday, and in the centre of Lahti, for example, large puddles of water accumulated on the streets in some places.

After Tuesday’s rains, temperatures are expected to drop to freezing, so until the snow melts, the streets will be sometimes wet and sometimes icy.

Contractors are moving snow quickly as the weather turns wetter. In Lahti, piles of snow are either driven to melt away from traffic lanes or dumped in snow dumps to reduce the amount of water on the streets.

According to the weather forecast of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Lahti is expected to get water and snow showers on Tuesday and for the next few days, plus temperatures during the day and below freezing temperatures at night.

Snow driving also prepares for the dust season

Although the streets are still largely covered in ice or slush, the current work is already preparing for the next stage, when the sand has to be cleared away. According to Leppäaho, the snow piles will also remove sources of dust.

– Every spring, people joke that the city competes with the sun to drive away the snow. But the point is that we get a lot of different dirt and loose material from the benches, which would be dusting there.

In some places in Lahti, efforts are also being made to remove layers of sand from light traffic lanes already after the streets have dried, even though the spring weather could still bring new snow and the need for anti-slippery.

– In Karrikok, we strive to ensure that there are no wreaths up to the ankles, maintenance manager Leppäaho says.

The model is used on a larger scale in, for example, Helsinki, although the streets there are more often dry during the winter than in Lahti.

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