Mom Nature has really provided a boost for snow clearing in High River this past week.

Manager of Operational Services with the Town, Eugene Lund, says town crews were busy back in December making sure downtown sidewalks were cleared.

"We've had to deal with a lot more snow this year, just on account of the couple of major storms that have come through so we had to deal with it differently than we have had to in the previous years," Lund says. "What that has entailed is rather than letting it build up and then come along and remove it, just because of the build-up we've had to arrange for it to be pushed into the street and bring in additional heavy equipment to get it out of downtown."

He says everything they did before December 31 counted against the 2016 budget and that was looking good because of the milder winter last year.

Lund says they've put a pretty good dent in the 2017 snow clearing budget since January 1 but won't know how much until they're invoiced at the end of the month.