Hard-pressed city and state authorities across the east and midwest of the United States are having to find hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funds to meet the costs of dealing with one of the coldest winters of recent times.



As the latest in a series of storms to dump several feet of snow on major cities struck on Monday, budgets for clearing snowfall and removing ice from streets had already been busted from North Carolina to Vermont by extended stretches of bitterly cold weather.



“This winter, Mother Nature is not only breaking records, she’s breaking budgets as well,” said Erica Michel, a research analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “From the midwest to the south-east and up through New England, states are reporting historic spending on snow removal.” Regional government experts warned that spending cuts and even job losses may have to follow.



Members of Michigan’s house of representatives are currently considering a $100m emergency funding package for clearing and filling potholes on their roads. The plan was approved by the state senate after regional officials warned that overspends would leave them unable to carry out basic maintenance such as mowing and fixing guardrails later in the year.



Like many cities from the midwest to the east coast, Detroit, had its snowiest January on record this year. Officials from the surrounding Wayne County have said their snow-clearing costs are up by 200% on last year. Detroit filed for bankruptcy last July.



Yet more snow and freezing rain swept up from the south to the mid-Atlantic region on Monday, shutting down government offices and schools in Washington DC, and prompting states of emergency to be declared from Mississippi to New Jersey.



To the midwest, Ohio’s transportation department had three weeks ago already spent more than $20.6m over and above its $65m annual budget for clearing roads. Some $13.1m had been spent on overtime pay for the hundreds of crew members operating the state’s 1,627 ploughs – more than twice the total winter spend on overtime two years ago.

This NOAA GOES-13 satellire image shows the late-season winter storm as it continues to shift eastward. Photograph: HANDOUT/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: HANDOUT/AFP/Getty Images

The city of Chicago has also torn through its budget for removing snow, having spent $28m – more than 36% over budget for the year. Molly Poppe, a city spokeswoman, said a $6m fuel tax surplus would be used to bridge the gap. Officials from the state of Illinois told The Fiscal Times last month that they had spent more than $100m on clearing snow this winter, compared to $33.9m at the same point last year.

Further east, New Jersey has spent a total of $106m this winter on clearing snow – an increase of almost 70% on last year’s total of $62.5m. While gritters in the state used 258,000 tons of salt last year, some 442,000 tons had been used by the middle of this February.



“We set a new record,” Steve Shapiro, a spokesman for the state department of transportation, told the Guardian. “It has been an unusually difficult winter. We have had almost twice as much snow as in a typical year, and it came in back-back storms of unusual severity”.



Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, last month approved $35m in additional funding for tackling snow across the five boroughs this winter. The extra cash amounts to more than 60% of the city’s regular $57.3m budget, which has been burned through already.

“We have had more expensive winters,” said Kathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for the city’s department of sanitation. “But this has cost more than average … in light of all the severe storms we have had, more money was made available so we could continue to clear the streets and remove the snow.”

A city snow plow cleared a lane in Lexington, Kentucky. Photograph: Lexington Herald-Leader/ZUMA Press/Corbis Photograph: Lexington Herald-Leader/ Lexington Herald-Leader/ZUMA Press/Corbis



James Brooks, the program director for community development and infrastructure at the National League of Cities, said that in many areas “cities have been left hanging on their own” to deal with the effects of winter storms despite being “in a weakened capacity coming out of the great recession”.



“Cities will undoubtedly now have to cut back on things such as frequency in delivery of services, on personnel, perhaps even on entire programs,” said Brooks. “You have to cut where you have the most dollars, which is really in personnel costs … Cities are still going to confront some of the residual aspects of these winter storms well into the balance of this fiscal year.”



In New England, Massachusetts has spent more than $100m on snowstorms this season, according to the Associated Press, almost two and a half times the state’s $43m budget for the fiscal year. New Hampshire’s transportation department was forced to obtain approval for a $2.25m raid on the state highway fund, which comprises fuel tax revenue and vehicle registration charges, to supplement its regular $42m winter budget.



“We do anticipate having to go back for more,” said William Boynton, a spokesman for the New Hampshire state department of transportation. Boynton estimated that officials had spent about 88% of their budget two-thirds of the way through winter. “We have completely exhausted our overtime budget. It’s probably going to be the most expensive winter we have ever had.”



The pain has been felt farther south, too. Officials in North Carolina, where central and eastern schools were closed early on Monday after the National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory, told reporters a month ago that they had already exceeded their $30m yearly allowance. In Virginia, the state Department of Transportation has already exceeded its $10m snow removal budget by $3.4m, according to WRIC, a regional news station.