Mainroad North Island Contracting is warning drivers of very windy conditions in the coming days.

"A significant storm will bring periods of heavy rain and gusty winds impacting the Northern Vancouver Island Service Area over the next 72 hours, peaking late Tuesday," a release from the contractor says.

Crews will be patrolling and clearing drainage areas on all service highways until the storm ends and roadways are clear and back to normal.

Mainroad is expecting a lot of precipitation this winter for the North Island region, which will cause "a variety of conditions" in the area.

"With temperatures hovering close to freezing and varying road surface temperatures, rain, ice and snow are all possible during a given period of precipitation," a release from the road maintenance contractor says. "We are starting to see the cooler mornings and icing on the roads with snow at the higher elevations."

The release was sent to stakeholders in lieu of their annual pre-season stakeholder meeting. The group instead chose to send information about the coming winter to stakeholders, after receiving feedback about the meetings.

Through the winter, staff will be monitoring forecasts on an hourly, daily, and eight to fifteen day outlook to make decisions about equipment and personnel deployment.

"With that said, forecasting has become difficult with temperature variation driven by global circulations," the release says. "We have been finding forecasting to be increasingly difficult and we are working to prepare for worst case scenarios regarding weather events."

Mainroad North Island LP has the following resources:

- 80 operators plus a pool of auxiliary staff, mechanical support and subcontractors

- 46 Plow trucks

- Five Graders

- 16 Backhoes and Loaders

- 10,000 Tonnes of Salt

- 35,000 Tones of Sand

These resources will be deployed to align with priorities set out by the province.

"If you would like to notify us of an issue, please use our 24-Hour number at 1-877-215-7122," the release says.