Lack of snow leads to fixed roads in Columbia

Columbia officials said the lack of snow has a big impact on what road crews can do.

Monday marks the 15th day in a row we’ve had temperatures that were above average.

Last year, it was bitterly cold and Mid-Missouri dipped below zero degrees during the month of January.

It’s been a warm start to 2015 so far.

Even though we didn’t break any snowfall records last year, it was significantly colder that what it is now.

Columbia Public Works said it’s been able to repair a few parts of Columbia roads with the extra money that’s not being spent on snow removal.

Exactly one year ago this week, temperatures in Mid-Missouri were in the low 20s.

This week, temperatures are expected to be near 60 degrees Wednesday, and in the 40s through the weekend.

Despite that, ABC 17 Stormtrack Meteorologist Brittany Beggs said winter isn’t done with us yet.

“It’s important for folks to know, while it’s been a mild January, this is actually a similar setup to what we saw in 2013, where, unfortunately, we had heavy snowfall in February and March.”

Beggs also said the temperatures we’ve seen so far mirror 2013’s winter.

Temperatures reached 77 degrees at the end of the month, breaking a January record, but then came the snow.

Mid-Missouri got nearly 30 inches of snow throughout the next 60 days.

Steve Sapp with Columbia Public Works explained what they’ve been doing with the money not being used to plow snow.

“Actually, we’ve been able to use this mild weather to our advantage. We’ve made a number of repairs to streets that we didn’t think we’d be able to get to until spring.”

So far this year, road crews have spread 300 tons of salt.

Last year, they spread 16,000 tons of salt.

“Columbia crews have only been out a couple of times,” said Sapp.

Last year the city spent $566,000 on snow removal.