So far, no snow

It was just enough for Clarenville's Deputy Mayor Frazer Russell to handle with a shovel.

In fact, Friday's snowfall in the Clarenville area, was so insignificant in its density, that some didn't bother to shovel at all - figuring the rain would soon follow and wash the snow away.

"I've got a contractor who comes in to plough the lot," he said, as he cleared snow from the sidewalk of his commercial building.

"But I can handle this stuff myself," referencing the small heap of snow he had picked up with his shovel.

It's been that kind of a winter; unseasonably mild and with just a couple of storms bringing anything in the way of significant snowfall.

Good for those who hate shoveling; and great for towns trying to save money.

Bob Hiscock, Chief Executive Officer for the Town of Clarenville, says there's been a definite saving this winter.

At the end of 2009 (for the snowclearing season of January to December, that year) the town had $36,800 still remaining in the snowclearing account.

For 2010, the town had budgeted $510,000 for the service; and so far has spent less than half, $213,592. That leaves $296,407 for this winter, and up to the end of December.

"We're still out spreading salt and sand, and the daily shifts are the same, but there's been significant savings as far as overtime goes," Hiscock said, adding overtime can chew up a lot of the budget in a normal winter. This year there was hardly any overtime paid to the nine employees on the snowclearing shift.

The mild winter also means a savings on wear and tear on equipment, he added. With the five loaders, three dumptrucks and two sidewalk snowblowers, not having to do so much clearing duty, it means fewer repairs.

The constant freeze-thaw cycle can hit the town's pocketbook in other ways, though.

This year, says Hiscock, they've had to replace several manhole covers.

"With the freezing and thawing they lift off, and we've hooked a couple with the ploughs. So they have to be replaced."

Asphalt also usually takes a beating with wide fluctuations in temperatures.

Hiscock says some potholes have been developing, and the town's maintenance workers are filling them in as they appear.

But the damage is nowhere near what it was during the winter of 2008 when heavy rains washed away huge sections of Manitoba Drive. The installation of new pavement, and curb, has helped prevent a repeat.

The mild winter also meant less time lost from school.

Within Vista region, some schools have lost only three or four days due to weather. This week's sleet storm shut down schools in the Bonavista area for two days but that's about the most severe weather event to impact local students.

Yet in a place where winter weather is expected, and planned for, and livelihoods depend on blizzards, the mild winter has a downside.

For heaving equipment contractors, a normal winter means a few extra dollars in snowclearing contracts.

And it means extra income for small operators, with ploughs affixed to the front of 4 x 4 pickups. This year, they haven't been doing much work.

The lack of snow has also taken the fun out of winter.

Children are hard-pressed to find enough snow to build a snowman.

Outdoor skating has been hit and miss, and mostly not at all, and toboggans have been collecting dust in most sheds.

Meanwhile, sleds that run on horsepower have also gotten very little use.

Ron Smith is with the local chapter of the provincial Snowmobile Federation.

With an old rail bed running right through the area, he and his fellow volunteers are usually busy keeping the trail groomed for nighttime and weekend riders.

This year, they haven't had much to do.

"We haven't groomed the trails at all," he says. "Our groomer has been parked the whole winter. There's nothing here; you just can't run the groomer over rocks."

More disappointing, he says, was having to cancel plans for a major snowmobile gathering.

Rendezvous 2010 was scheduled to be held in Clarenville the last weekend in February. This event, usually held on the West Coast, normally draws a crowd.

Last year's event in Stephenville had about 250 people.

The local association started planning for the event in November, and had booked out 45 rooms one of the local hotels.

"We had everything fired up to go," says Smith, "with support from many local businesses and the Chamber of Commerce."

But as the winter dragged on, with no sign of it being anywhere close to normal, the registrations failed to materialize.

Early last month the organizers had to decide to cancel it. "You can't plan anything around our winters now," says Smith, adding the East coast of the province is, generally, more unpredictable than the West.

Meanwhile, sled owners looking to put a few miles on their machines have been hitching up their trailers and heading to Central and West.

"A lot of people are travelling to the West coast - around Cormack and Lewis Hills - to use their machines. And there's a bit of good going in around Gander and behind Terra Nova."

The cancellation of Rendezvous 2010 was a big disappointment for hotel manager Sheila Kelly-Blackmore, in a winter that's impacted accommodation nights.

In a normal year, wintry weather sees travelers taking refuge at hotels rather than risk highway driving in a blizzard.

"Depending on what time a snowstorm starts, you could be full at the start of the day and, if you get a storm blow through, end up referring customers to other hotels."

This year, she says, they hardly got any of that kind of traffic.

"This is the worst I've seen in 16 years," she says of the lack of storms, adding other hotel managers and owners she's talked to have a similar complaint.

While the local ski hill, White Hills, had a good winter, thanks to cold temperatures and snowmaking, Kelly-Blackmore says St. Jude's didn't see the kind of traffic they normally see from the downhill ski set.

"With the weather being so mild, people who drove out to ski for a day decided to drive back home that night, rather than stay. When the roads are clear and the weather is fine, people don't mind making the drive."

If the lack of snow wasn't bad enough, Kelly-Blackmore adds the couple of bad weather events that happen, occurred at entirely the wrong time.

"The storms that we did have happened on two weekends, and events that had been planned that would have brought travelers in, were cancelled."

A few high school volleyball tournaments were cancelled, and some teams were unable to show up for a couple of minor hockey tournaments.

In an hotelier's ideal world, quips Kelly-Blackmore, "Mother Nature would plan snowstorms between Monday and Thursday."

That way they'd get the travelers seeking shelter in the middle of the week, and fewer cancellations for planned weekend events.

But it's not an ideal world.

And it's enough to make Ron Smith wonder about the bigger picture.

"My question is, is this a sign of the times or is it a fluke winter? If it's true what they say about global warming; will next year be another one like this."

The last big winter we had was 2007; now we're going into 2010, he muses, adding, "We've seen mild winters before - in 1998 and 1999 there was no snow, and then, in the winter of 2001 we had 600 cm of snow.

"It may be a cyclical thing that works itself around in a couple of years," he says, with a hint of hope.

editor@thepacket.ca