Brandon crews removed nearly 60K tonnes of snow off streets this winter, official says

After a long and snowy winter, Brandon city crews have more than 1500 semi-loads of snow or about 60,000 tonnes off of streets so far, according to the city's director of public works.

The city tweeted a video of those trucks earlier this week to show just how much snow that is:

Pam Richardson with the City of Brandon says plows have worked practically non-stop all winter.

"It just never seemed to stop. You know, we would start clearing and, you know, we would get out there and just about finish. And then before you knew it, we'd have another great big dump of snow and we'd kind of have to restart the clock," she said.

"It just was no break in between, it seemed like this year."

According to CBC meteorologist John Sauder, Brandon has received about 150 centimetres of snow this winter to date. That's about 50 centimetres more than the Wheat City usually gets in an entire year, according to Environment Canada data.

Richardson said it's certainly the most she's ever seen during her time working for the city.

With all the snow, Richardson said crews did their best to get it off city streets as soon as they could, but didn't have much time for anything else.

"Our normal operation would be, we would go out, do our plow event, and then we would circle back after it was finished and look at maintenance can we widen those streets? Can we haul away some of the snow and get prepared for the next time?" she said.

"We just didn't have an opportunity to do that this time."

As temperatures begin to warm up, Richardson says, crews are starting preparation for spring flood prevention, clearing catch basins and making sure melting snow has someplace to go.