Just as the City of Humboldt has dug out from a snowstorm, another weather-related problem is on the horizon.

“We anticipate that water breaks are going to be the most difficult thing that we have to deal with, along with the thawing period,” public works director Peter Bergquist told Bolt FM.

“We’ll have times where it’s warm days and we have to scramble to open up drains, and then it’ll freeze over again and then it’ll thaw and then freeze. That’s our biggest challenge during the spring, is to make make sure those storm drains keep on draining and don’t freeze back up.”

The city has also had to thaw some shallow home water lines that had frozen as the frost line crept closer to seven-and-a-half feet. The city then turned on some of the valves that allow a trickle of water into sewer systems to prevent further freezing.

“At this point we don’t have to run them all, we just have to run the first priority level and we have most of them activated at this point. We’re not anticipating it to get any worse at this point be we’re going to be monitoring it,” Bergquist said.

He also said the city slightly exceeded its snow removal budget due to extra trucking costs from last week’s storm.