BY KEITH LACEY
Although it is beginning to look and feel more like January than April, Ontario has been experiencing some of the warmest winter weather on record.
This isn’t good news for outdoor enthusiasts and for retailers who sell things such as skis, snowmobiles and snowboards, but it isn’t all bad news.
Taxpayers across the City of Greater Sudbury won’t be realizing any savings if the warm winter weather that ended 2006 continues in 2007, but they also won’t have to pay any additional fees as had become common during bitter winters in the past.
“Needless to say, our snow budget so far in 2007 has realized significant savings,” said Bob Falcioni, director of roads and transportation for the City of Greater Sudbury.
The new council elected in November is about to begin budget deliberations to set the 2007 winter budget, which includes all dates until Dec. 31, said Falcioni.
Last year’s winter control budget was in the range of $14.4 million.
“That’s about in the range of what we’ve had over the past few years...Obviously some years we come in well under budget and other years we are over budget if we have a very bad winter,” said Falcioni.
Unless something drastic happens with Mother Nature over the next few weeks, it’s almost certain the warm weather over the past two months will play a significant role in setting a winter control budget for 2007, he said.
“We shouldn’t forget last year we were having a rather mild winter again, when all of a sudden we had three major storms in two weeks in early February,” said Falcioni. “This is Northern Ontario and anything can happen.”
The lack of snow so far this season has resulted in a drastic cutback in the number of contractors normally hired by the city for snow removal, said Falcionci.
The city usually hires in the range of four dozen contractors to remove snow and only a few of them have been called out in the past few weeks, he said.
The city’s regular winter control staff in the range of 70 workers hasn’t been removing much snow, but they have been kept busy doing other work, said Falcioni.
“There’s still plenty to do in such areas as pothole repairs, culvert repairs and a bunch of other work that needs to be done,” he said.
In his 20 years as an employee with the city, Falcioni remembers some mild winters, but nothing can match this one.
“The combination of no snow and very warm weather isn’t good news for us at all, says Rocky’s Lodge manager Christina Harris.
The lodge on Lake Wahnapitae relies on snowmobilers for 70 percent of its annual business.
“We’ve been here for 13 years and we’ve had some warm winters, but nothing like this,” she said. “There are other winters where we don’t get a lot of snow, but it’s cold and we still get people coming out.
If it wasn’t for several contract miners renting out all the rooms at the lodge, business would be almost non-existent so far this winter, said Harris.
If there’s any light at the end of the tunnel it’s that it’s still early January, this is Northern Ontario and there’s still a good chance the lakes will freeze, there will be plenty of snow and the season can still be salvaged, she said.
“All you can do is remain optimistic and hope we get some semblance of a normal winter,” she said. “A lot of businesses obviously rely heavily on the winter and ones like ours can’t survive unless we do well in the winter. We just have to be patient and hope things turn around.”
Norm Heins, operations manager for the Sudbury Trail Plan Association, said the mild winter weather has a lot of sledders very upset, but he’s “not about to give up on the season just yet.”
The fact is in the association’s 20-year history, local trails have only been open three times before New Year’s, said Heins.
The trail system is normally operational by the second weekend of the new year, which would be this coming weekend, and that’s not going to happen in 2007, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change in a hurry, he said.
“We have absolutely no control over Mother Nature, but I remain confident we’re still going to get plenty of cold weather and snow and we can salvage this season,” he said.
The warm weather hasn’t affected sales of trail plan passes as they’ve increased by 400 to more than 3,200, said Heins.
Chris Gore, manager of community partnerships for the City of Greater Sudbury, said the mild weather has closed down all the city’s ski hills, but he also remains optimistic better news is just around the corner.
Ski hills in Lively and Capreol rely solely on natural snow and have remained closed so far this season, he said.
Adanac Ski Hill in New Sudbury has snow-making machinery, but at least until this week the weather has been too warm to sustain any kind of snow production.
He still is hopeful there will be a decent ski season over the next several weeks.
“All we can do is keep our fingers crossed and hope some decent snowfall in on the way,” he said.
Gore has also been working for the city for 20 years and can’t remember a winter where there has been such an extended period of warm weather and so little snow.
Like Gore and Harris, snowmobile retailers and sporting goods shops that sell ski and snowboard equipment will continue tuning into The Weather Channel as we head into the second week of January.
