Every time you provide “year-end” stats when it pertains to a snow season, there’s always the concern you’re going to jinx it and yet another snowstorm will hit that adds to the seasonal total.
That said, the Wright County Highway Department has compiled statistics for the 2022-23 winter snow season and the numbers are quite staggering.
The number of days that Highway Department workers were out on the road was 84 – roughly double that of a typical winter and included one stretch where road clearing was done 17 straight days due to numerous storms coming one after another.
During the winter season, more than 12,000 labor hours were used to clear roads and shoulders, more than 118,000 gallons of liquid de-icer was used, almost 13,000 tons of salt and more than 120,000 miles of roads were treated.
The two closest official weather stations to Wright County checked in with record or near-record snowfall. St. Cloud received 88.2 inches of snow – the most ever recorded in one snow season – while the Twin Cities recorded 90.3 inches of snow – the third snowiest on record.
For those Highway Department plow drivers who kept the roads clean this winter, hopefully it will be a long time before Wright County sees the kind of snow totals and number of snow events that took place in the winter and spring of 2022-23.