The Rural Municipality of Hanover is dealing with its worst spring thaw in years. That is according to Wes Fehr, Manager of Works and Operations.

Fehr says mild weather in January and February built up layers of ice in ditches. As a result, culverts are now frozen and crews are working nearly around the clock to prevent flooding. Fehr says they have two crews going around steaming culverts and have also hired contractors in places to help get the water flowing.

In Mitchell and Randolph, some basements have flooded. Fehr says those issues have been resolved as water levels have since dropped.

"It's unfortunate that those things do happen," says Fehr. "Sometimes this overland flooding comes up pretty quick and definitely the ice build up that we've been having it's difficult to try and stay ahead of that."

Fehr notes two roads are closed to traffic due to overland flooding. They are Road 32E, between 37N and 38N and then Road 30N between Road 32E and 33E.

Anyone who comes across issues with overland flooding is invited to call the RM of Hanover at 204-326-4488. Fehr says they are prioritizing the calls accordingly. He notes if water is running over a driveway it is not considered high priority. Their top priority is keeping water flowing to prevent flooded basements and buildings.

With the mercury dropping to -12 degrees Celsius Monday night, Fehr says that had both a positive and negative impact. He notes it allowed water to run off without additional melting to occur. Yet, he says in some areas where the flow was minimal, it just froze the culverts again.

"If you talk to our crew, we'd like to have one continuous thaw and just get it over with," says Fehr. "But at the same time if we can get the warmer temperatures during the day and just below freezing for night, just to slow it down."

Meanwhile, Fehr says once they are done with the thaw, the next concern will be the state of gravel roads. He suspects roads will be quite soft this spring.

"From what we've seen on the mild days that we have had, we've seen a lot of rutting, a lot of soft areas that we're suspecting are going to be quite bad going into the spring," says Fehr.