PROVO, Utah — While there are plenty of concerns about the impacts of this low-snow year, the downstream effects aren’t all bad.
FOX 13 News talked with Provo city officials who have turned the paltry snowfall totals into a productive few months over at their public works department.
In four years directing the department, Shane Winters has seen the polar opposites a Provo winter can bring. 2023 became one of the costliest years they’ve endured after record-high snowfall.
“It was the most we’ve seen in the Wasatch mountains above Provo,” Winters recalled.
Now in 2026, faced with record-lows, they’ve only sent their snow removal fleet out one time.
But a lack of plowing doesn’t mean their work stops.
Winters says this opened up the opportunity to get ahead on filling potholes, cleaning stormwater pipes, doing concrete work, capital projects and more.
They’ve also managed to save quite a bit. In the average year, Winters says they put down more than 2,000 tons of salt.
This year, he thinks that number could be less than a truckload.
So their salt shed is fully stocked, and they haven’t had to purchase any more salt all winter.
Winters says they plan to use that surplus money to buy the equipment needed to add efficient, cost-effective brine solutions to their road-clearing arsenal.
“So once we can purchase that and implement that, it actually reduces our salt budget by about 30%,” said Winters. "So this year, because of those savings, we can use that to help future savings by getting that brine solution system.”
