And it keeps coming...
Revelstoke has received 505 centimetres (16 and a half feet) of snowfall so far this snow season.
City of Revelstoke public works department operations manager Darren Komonoski had some bad news for city council at a Mar. 1 committee meeting.
Revelstoke has basically blown the newly-revised snow removal budget. As of that date, they'd spent $900,000 of the $908,000 budget, and removal crews were still out on the streets dealing with a Sunday night storm.
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PHOTO: Revelstoke resident Brodie Cholach watches a city crew remove a windrow on 2nd Street West on the morning of Mar. 3. When asked about all the snow, Cholach said it was "too much!" Snow removal continues in the downtown core due to flooding concerns.
What this means, said Komonoski, is a reduction in snow hauling, meaning those piles of snow on your block are likely to get bigger.
Crews will clear the snow to the side, but the city is out of money to hire contractors to haul snow away as they normally would. This means moving to a reduced level of service.
We asked Komonoski for clarification on what that means: "We will continue to hire contractors if it continues to snow and volumes warrant it being hauled away from downtown," Komonoski wrote in an email to the Times Review. "As well collector and arterials will be hauled away if there is no physical base left to store snow."
Komonoski explained that snow must be removed downtown to avert flooding.
The snowfall this season is above average. A snow removal guide published by the City of Revelstoke pegs the 100-year average at 411 centimetres.
Currently, Revelstoke is experiencing the 17th-snowiest winter in the past century. If Environment Canada's forecast of 5–10 centimetres overnight is accurate, we are likely to leapfrog into 15th or 14th place by Thursday morning.