No winter: City crews take full advantage

What a massive difference a year can make.

This time last winter the city’s road crews were trying to remove massive amounts of snow that had kept piling up since the November.

Near minus 20C temperatures in December had complicated matters and crews were out for the first five weeks of January clearing it away. The snow storage site next to the Apple Bowl was full.

But this year, the El Niño influenced winter is very different.

There’s not a speck of snow on the storage field, and just a few snow trucks have made rare forays to grit the roads at higher elevations.

That means city crews have had more time to deal with numerous other matters: from LED street light conversions, pothole fixes, line painting, sidewalk repairs, street sweeping, and even garbage can replacement.

“This has been a strange year for sure,” the city’s Roadways Operations Manager Andrew Schwerdtfeger told Kelowna10. “We only responded to three snow events in December...with no real accumulation at all. It almost feels like spring.”

Schwerdtfeger said in an average year the city responds to 27 unique snow events, but in 2023 that number was just five. The serious snow last winter was in November and December 2022. So, the dry and warm start to this season has helped the budget, slicing $1.2 million off what is typically around a $3 million line item. The snow removal budget year runs January to December.

But the city never stops working and the benign conditions have helped crews get on with plenty of other tasks.

For example, the ground is soft enough to enable crews to excavate the holes to instal high volume Molok garbage cans at City Park. This project was initially scheduled for spring. These larger and more attractive garbage cans will require emptying only once a month compared to four times a day in peak periods.

Crews have also been out re-painting road lines and crosswalks, something that can’t be done unless the temperatures are above zero and it’s dry.

Despite the very pleasant winter weather so far, Schwerdtfeger is assuring the public they have the ability to quickly switch to all-out snow clearance if the conditions do change. The city’s fleet of heavy trucks can be converted back and forth between hauling and winter operations in around 15 minutes. That gives the crews a lot of operational flexibility during abnormal seasons like this.

Compared to that frigid and big snow winter of early 2022/23, crews have been enjoying their outdoor work while this exceptional weather continues.

“I think we all enjoyed having Christmas off,” he said. “Last winter our staff worked through Christmas and New Year’s. Some of them didn’t get a break fort two weeks straight.”

But Schwerdtfeger admitted others were missing the white stuff.

“I think some of us are chomping at the bit for some snow and to clear some roads and put some material down. That’s the hope at least.”