KEENE, N.H. (MyKeeneNow) – The City of Keene has issued a Winter Weather parking ban for Wednesday night.

A Winter Weather Advisory will go into effect at 7:00 tonight and expire at noon on Thursday. The National Weather Service is expecting total snow accumulations between 2 and 7 inches in the Monadnock Region.

The Keene Public Works Department issued the ban that will go into effect at 6:00 p.m. tonight and will include all on-street parking in the city, other than metered parking spaces. The ban will expand at 1:00 a.m. on Thursday to include all on-street parking, both free and metered.

While the ban is in effect, the Elm Lot and the Gilbo East Lot will be available overnight for public use. You can find a full list of which public parking lots are open on which nights during a ban here.

The ban will be lifted once road maintenance operations are complete. The city will send out a notification when that time comes. Those interested can sign up for those notifications at KeeneNH.gov/snow.

Previously, Keene’s winter parking ban prohibited all on-street parking from November-April, whether there was snow on the ground or not. The City Council updated the ordinance to say that there will only be a ban when the Public Works Director deems it necessary.

The advisory says that although snowfall amounts may be light, travel will still be impacted due to untreated roads, and periods of moderate and heavy snow will combine with low visibility to create dangerous driving conditions that could impact the Thursday morning commute.

New Hampshire State law requires that drivers remove all snow and ice from their vehicle, including from the roof, before hitting the road. The law went into effect after a Nashua woman was killed on Route 202 in Peterborough in 1999 when a sheet of ice flew off of a tractor trailer truck, hit a box truck, and went through her windshield.