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It will take a handful of bulldozers and a few more weeks of warm weather, but City of Winnipeg staff are confident they can take a dent out of an 18-metre snowpile that has stubbornly refused to melt before winter threatens to once again overwhelm the city’s snow-dumping sites.

Jim Berezowsky, the manager of street maintenance with the municipality, said one of the harshest winters witnessed in a century led to the remarkable pile-up. To make matters worse, a cool spring and a reluctant summer slowed the annual melt.

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Hopefully, we’ll have some rain and that will accelerate the rest of the melt

The icy, dirt-covered mountain in one of the city’s four snow-dumping sites is higher than he has ever seen it at this time of year.

“On Monday we had dozers at one of the facilities cutting into some of the snow piles and exposing it to air,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll have some rain and that will accelerate the rest of the melt.”

Normally, city staff spend August cleaning up garbage and preparing snow sites for the coming winter’s unwanted ice dumps.