With temps warming up into the 80s this week, most people are assuming that the transition from winter to spring is over, along with the snow and ice season.
The Wright County Highway Department recently released statistics for the season and, for the second straight year, the snowfall total was 30 inches – the second straight year of near-record-setting lack of snow.
Statistics show there were 32 winter events, most involved treating roads for ice and freezing rain control as opposed to significant snowstorms.
County Highway Department stats show 14 early call-outs for plow drivers, with 52-hundred labor hours, 6 thousand tons of salt utilized, and about 123 thousand 600 gallons of liquid de-icer applied.
To emphasize how mild that was, in the winter of 2022-23, there were 84 winter events, 90 inches of snow, more than 12,500 labor hours, and 13,500 tons of salt used.
While not ideal for winter outdoors enthusiasts, back-to-back mild winters have not only made keeping roads clear much less stressful, but have also resulted in significant cost savings to the county compared to a more typical winter season.
State officials say April 2025 was really a month of ups and downs…
“If you look at the state as a whole we wound up about a half a degree above normal, about a third of an inch above normal for precipitation. So lots of extremes, what you’d expect in a transit month but really not too far off from average.”
Minnesota Assistant State Climatologist Pete Boulay says recent rainfall in some parts of the states really put a dent in the drought conditions…
“The Mississippi Headwaters area also got rain. That was the area that was in severe drought and finally lifted them another level up to just moderate drought. The area, parts of the state with no drought at all expanded from east central Minnesota farther west. Now St. Cloud is out of the drought. Rochester is out of the drought.”
The U-S Drought Monitor for Minnesota as of May 1st shows no drought conditions in Wright County, and much of the surrounding area.
(content: in part, courtesy MNN and Wright County)
