Last weekend’s major winter storm left a sheet of ice, mounds of snow and slush, and one hefty bill in its wake.
The Halifax Regional Municipality spent an estimated $800,000 clearing snow and spreading salt after a weather bomb pounded the Maritimes on late Friday and through Saturday.
“That’s pretty typical for this kind of storm,” said HRM spokeswoman Shaune MacKinlay.
“If you look at it as one event over two days … based on the fact that we had our full complement of snow removal equipment out there, and because of the ice we had a high level of salt use.”
MacKinlay added that much of the bill will be determined by private contractors, so the final numbers won’t be available for several days.
HRM has set aside a total of $16.3 million for snow and ice removal in the municipality this winter. So far, MacKinlay said, Mother Nature hasn’t put too much of a strain on that fund. In the past three months, HRM has yet to see a single day when snowfall totalled more than 20 centimetres.
“We’ve been fortunate in that winter hasn’t hit us too badly at this point compared to other years,” MacKinlay said.
That may change, however, as Nova Scotians brace for what are normally the two coldest and stormiest months of the year.
“This time of year, we have a good supply of cold air over Quebec and Labrador, and we still have fairly warm temperatures coming from the Gulf Stream,” explained Environment Canada meteorologist Bob Robichaud. “There’s a huge temperature contrast over a relatively short distance, and that’s how storms develop.”
For now, the national weather centre is predicting mostly cloudy skies over HRM in the coming week, with no major snow accumulation expected before Monday.
