The high cost of plowing Newfoundland's snowiest February
St. John's, N.L., shattered its record for the snowiest February on record, with more than 178 cm of accumulation. We spoke to Mayor Danny Breen about the city's massive and costly, snow-removal efforts.
After St. John’s, N.L., saw it’s snowiest month ever recorded in February with 178.2 centimetres accumulated, the city called in the reserves, awarding $3.5 million in contracts to help clear away snow in three major subdivisions by March 1.
Despite the official arrival of spring on the calendar, the snow has continued throughout March.
A full fleet review of the city’s snow-clearing equipment was conducted after the historic blizzard, dubbed Snowmageddon, dumped up to 100 cm of snow on the city over a two-day period in January of 2020.
Mayor Danny Breen said that led to significant investment in equipment like loaders and trucks, meaning less breakdowns.
Despite that, the sheer volume of snow was hard to overcome this year.
“We ran out of storage space for snow because of the two snowstorms in a short period of time. We had to truck a lot of snow. And that’s very expensive when you’re using private contractors to blow out subdivisions, and then truck the snow to a site," said Breen.
The city works on a calendar-year budget so it’s too early to tell just how over budget efforts have been, but Breen says the city holds reserves. The previous February and March (in 2025) weren’t as severe so that will help balance it a bit.
“At the end of the day, the snow falls [and] we [have to] move it. We’ve got to keep the city moving, and we’ve taken some financial steps to guard ourselves from those abnormal conditions," said Breen.
27.6 cm of snowfall was recorded at the St. John's airport from the storm on March 24. On average, St. John’s sees another 40 to 50 cm after March 25.
Thumbnail courtesy of Colin Lane/X (https://twitter.com/ColinLa709).