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Heavy January snowfall kept city workers busy

By Sue Sitter - | Jan 29, 2022

Sue Sitter/PCT City workers use heavy equipment to clear four-foot-high piles of snow from the edges of Fourth Street Southeast in Rugby Jan. 19.

Recent snow storms and winds left drifts piled more than two-feet high in parts of Rugby, keeping city workers busy hauling truckloads of snow to collection sites.

Streets and sewer supervisor Troy Munyer said city public works employees have been dealing with more snow than “in the last couple of years, actually.” Mountains of snow piled by plows and blades lined city streets after a series of storms in mid-January. Workers cleared the piles by scooping them up with a loader, then dumping the scoopfuls into large city-owned trucks.

“We just keep on moving and hauling it. We haul up to Dewey Street near the railroad tracks. We also have a pasture west of McGuire’s (Automotive),” Munyer said.

Munyer said although workers have made plenty of trips to deposit truckloads of snow, he wasn’t worried the city would run out of places to put it.

“Not yet,” he said. “We’ve had a lot more snow than this before. I would say 1997 was our snowiest year I can remember. The snow banks were five- or six-feet tall. We were pushing snow on top of piles.

“I’d say this year’s snowfall used to be our normal year. It’s not that much,” Munyer said. “It’s more than we’ve had in the past, but everybody has forgotten how much is normal, since we haven’t had as much snow as this for four years, basically.

“I think five years ago was when we had the equivalent of this. So, now, people have forgotten how it used to be,” Munyer added with a laugh.