Mild winter means big savings on the road for Kelowna, Kamloops
Millions of dollars are spent plowing hundreds of kilometres of roads in Kelowna and Kamloops in the winter, so a mild winter can mean big savings.
Kelowna allocated $3 million for snow removal in 2025 and so far the city has only spent $1.56 million, which means a $1.44 million in savings.
“When we see less snowfall, we save on items like fuel, materials like sand and salt, and overtime hours but we still have substantial base costs for equipment, staffing, contract services, etc,” the city’s communications manager Tom Wilson told iNFOnews.ca.
Kamloops’ budget is a bit different since its financial year lines up with the calendar year so the final numbers aren’t in for 2025. The city’s streets manager Jeff Putnam said Kamloops saved roughly $200,000 from the $1.9 million snow removal budget in 2024, mostly due to less snow in November and December. Putnam said unless there's a lot of snow towards the end of 2025 the city is in a good position to save big this year as well.
The Okanagan saw significantly less snow than it usually does, but Kamloops was closer to the seasonal average.
“Throughout the Okanagan itself, we received about 50 to 60 per cent of our typical wintertime precipitation. And then Kamloops is faring a little bit better up to about 80 per cent of its normal wintertime precipitation,” Environment Canada meteorologist Lisa Erven said.
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Kamloops has to clear 1,500 km of roads and Kelowna has 1,988 km to clear. Putnam said the lack of snow is an opportunity to keep those roadways in shape.
“If this trend continues we're gonna be able to do spring cleanup a little sooner and we'll be able to get out there and start sweeping,” Putnam said. “We do a ton of pothole and road repairs, often we will start sweeping down low in the valley and we do all that on graveyard shift.”
Vernon also benefited from less snow this year.
The city frequently has air quality advisories largely due to the dust kicked up from the grit spread on the road to give for traction. The city uses sweepers equipped with a vacuum to help suck up some of the dust that flies off during street sweeping.
“The City has responded to 20 snow and ice events to date during the 2024/2025 winter season, just shy of the typical 24 per season average for Vernon," the city said in an emailed statement.
"This season, a lower volume of winter traction material was applied than compared to other seasons. This lower amount of traction material could result in a faster spring sweeping program, however, the amount of dust generated is difficult to determine as many factors can increase or decrease the generation of dust, including the amount of precipitation received.”
— With files from Ben Bulmer
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