Back-to-back winters to likely see historic low snowfall

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) -Winter hasn’t gone as expected for the past two years.

A lack of snow and winter weather has left the area brown and dry, a rare sight considering Minnesota’s famous winters.

One dry winter can be expected every few years, but experts say that the back-to-back snowless winters is an extraordinary run.

“Last winter was the least snowy we’ve ever seen,” said First Alert Meteorologist Daniel Sawicki. “It’s looking like if we stay on the pace we are it’s going to be two years in a row of least snowiest winters so we’re going to need a couple of snowfall events here in the next couple of weeks at meteorological winter ends March 1st to try and catch up and not set a record again for this year.”

Typically MnDOT is busy dealing with ice and snow events, but that hasn’t been in the cards this year.

The agency said they’re still keeping themselves busy, working on tree removal on highways and doing prep work for summer construction projects.

MnDOT has also taken the opportunity to get some extra time working on the Highway 93 project near Henderson, which lost weeks of work to this past summer’s flood events.

“The crews can be out there working on things and getting things done when it gets really cold out it gets a little big harder to do those tasks, but with the winter being open they’re at least not having to fight with the snow out there, just deal with the temperatures,” said MnDOT’s Scott Morgan.

MnDOT is also taking the dry winter to train some new employees so that they’re at 100-percent strength when the snow inevitably returns.

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