During a typical snow season, Park City staff will regularly plow roughly 130 miles of streets and 15 miles of trails and sidewalks. But this season is anything but normal.
Utah has recorded the warmest start to ski season since meteorologists started tracking temperatures in 1992 and the state’s snowpack hit a record low this month.
Park City Public Works Director Troy Dayley said the lack of snow has allowed staff to catch up on other work.
“We're trying to do other projects that we really never get the chance to do on a typical snow removal season because we're out following snow and hauling snow,” he said. “We're able to do a lot of street sweeping. We're able to do a lot of grubbing and cleaning our stream banks.”
Two weeks ago, staff cleaned up one of the area’s most visible streams off Bonanza Drive.
Dayley said his team has also been sanding and staining park benches as well as repairing and renovating the bus wash station.
“Kind of the motto is we all need to earn our keep, and so we try to find projects to keep everybody engaged and busy,” Dayley said.
The warm weather has also allowed the city to save on salt. Dayley said Park City typically spends about $100,000 on salt during a normal winter season. This year, he said the city has spent half that and only used about $20,000 worth of the salt so far.
“We've got more salt used for the amount of inches of snow,” Dayley said. “The sidewalk staff will go out and salt the sidewalks multiple times, even if it hasn't snowed, just for ice control.”
The lack of precipitation also means fewer potholes in the area. Freeze and thaw cycles make asphalt crack and burst, but Dayley said the cycles this year have been limited.
However, there may be more potholes come spring, as March typically sees higher levels of precipitation.
