Coping with winter is a full time job for a lot of people, especially in Muskoka where new snowfall records are being set.
Even a week after the big storm there's still a mountain of work to do.
But today, people in Muskoka are taking a much-deserved break from shovelling snow in the bitter cold.
“My fingers are not freezing off,” says Chris Anthony. “No jacket.”
Not only did Muskoka set a record for snowfall in December with 212 centimetres, the snow has kept on coming in January. A week into this month Muskoka has had 72 cm of snow fall. The normal average for the whole month is 90. Today, crews are still playing catch up in the clean-up.
“We are in clean up phase right now. Pushing back banks, moving snow,” says Walt Schmid with the Town of Bracebridge.
A lot of crews were out today taking advantage of the break. Even so, Bracebridge spent more than $100,000 on snow clearing last month alone, putting it at risk of going way over its $700,000 annual budget. And even when the snow hasn't been falling in the past couple of days, they've still been out making a dent in the 2014 budget.
Today's sunny skies and mild temperatures are helping, but are also causing a whole new set of problems.
“This definitely helps,” says Schmid. “We're getting snow melt so that's all good. As far as reducing the amount of snow, it does tend to turn some of our rural roads into a little more ice. Let's just say that. So we've been out sanding as well.”
Workers know the break is almost over. Environment Canada says more snow is on the way for the next several days again. Snow is being shipped out of the yard. And the salt and sand domes are being re-filled.
So far the town has used more than 5,000 tonnes of sand since last month. It normally uses about double that in an entire year.
