Montreal weather forecast doesn't bode well for street clearing operations

Temperatures are hitting a record high Friday morning, but big changes are on the way.

Friday will reach a high of 7 degrees Celsius, breaking the 1986 record of 5.3C. The warm temperatures are paired with rain and as the thermometer drops, that rain will change to freezing rain and then to snow near midnight. Before it's all over, Montrealers are expected to see another 15 centimetres or so of snow.

It could complicate what is set to be the end of snow clearing operations for the storm that dumped 25 centimetres of snow on the city over the weekend.

Friday's rain could cause some drains could get clogged with snow and ice, city officials warn. That doesn’t bode well for Saturday's snow storm.

Complicating things further is laws regulating the hours worked by city cleanup crews. After working for five days, the workers are obligated to take a 24-hour break that starts overnight on Friday.

The city has assigned 3,000 workers to ensure storm drains are cleared.

According to the city, as of Friday morning, 82 per cent of the current snow clearing operation is completed. Saint- Leonard was the fastest to finish th work and Plateau-Mont-Royal is currently at 96 per cent.

• See real-time progress updates here

Cote-Des-Neiges-NDG is lagging behind all other boroughs at 64 per cent, though that's up from just 48 per cent done as of Thursday night.

CDN-NDG Mayor Sue Montgomery took to social media to say she understood residents' frustration and attributed the delays in clearing to weather and bad luck.

"First, two of the big blowers which spit snow into the transport trucks broke down on Tuesday night, slowing down operations considerably," she said. "Secondly, there are three sites where we can unload the snow: access on the Turcot interchange; the other one is in St-Michel, which means that the transport trucks are often stuck in the traffic of the Decarie and Metropolitan for literally hours."

“We started the operation on Monday and normally we take five days to retrieve all that snow from the streets of Montreal,” said City of Montreal spokesperson Philippe Sabourin. “We worked very hard this week and because (Friday) we’re expecting rain and on Saturday we’re going to have 15 centimetres of snow, we have to keep working on the operation. But we have to do it in a safe way.”