Kaedyn Jennings squeezed between a lawnmower and a white truck on a recent Wednesday at his shop in Wasilla. He climbed on the truck bed and pulled back a tarp covering a large drum full of loose gravel. Jennings usually is hard at work with his plow route this time of year, but right now, he’s spending more time sanding.
Jennings is the owner and operator of Snip and Clip, a lawncare and snow management company that services roughly 110 residential and commercial properties in Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
He started servicing lawns in 2022, then bought a plow the following year after nearly eleven feet of snow blanketed the region. Anchorage has had less than 10 inches of snow since Nov. 1, according to the National Weather Service.
Jennings has only plowed eight times this season.
“December is usually our killer month, where it snows a ton. Last time in December we plowed seven or eight times. For this year to be only one time in December, and it was only one time in the Valley. We didn't even plow in Anchorage in December. That was kind of where I was like, ‘huh, this might be a little weird,’” Jennings said.
The company plows when it snows two inches, and Jennings said the majority of services were performed at the beginning of the season. October was the snowiest the city experienced in over two decades.
Snip and Clip runs on a subscription basis, and rates start at $175 a month for unlimited plowing. Jennings said the subscription model is the primary reason he’s able to keep his business afloat this year.
“The subscription model is 110% why we are in business,” Jennings said. “I guarantee if I was a per-push company, I wouldn't have a shop right now.”
Jennings said the lack of snow has prompted a few customers to try to cancel their subscriptions, and the business isn’t growing this year like he had planned.
With the influx of business he would’ve likely had with a heavier snow year, he was planning to hire more employees and expand his fleet.
But he’s not paying himself a salary this year.
“I would say it probably wasn't even a decision. It was just not going to happen,” he said.
He said he’d rather keep his business afloat, and his customers happy.
Another snow removal business owner, Jacob Bishop, said he’s had to dramatically cut his workforce this winter. Bishop owns Be Happy Property Services, a property maintenance and construction company that services roughly 200 properties in the greater Anchorage area.
Last year, the company employed 40 people who frequently worked 80-100 hour weeks to clear snow. He said he’s had to lay off a dozen employees.
He said the company has been doing more construction work, like home renovations.
“We wouldn't pay the bills if we didn't have those other things going on,” Bishop said.
Bishop said looking at long range weather forecasts he was planning on a below-average snow year, but didn’t think it’d be this bad. Be Happy has only plowed 5 times this season.
“If you would have told me that it was going to be like this winter, I would have been very scared and stressed about it,” he said.
Bishop said the company lost money on monthly contracts the last two years because of the overwhelming amount of snow, plowing over 25 times each season. In that sense, he said, he’s able to recoup some of the money he’s lost.
But Bishop said the lack of snow means the company will have far fewer resources to gear up for the lawn care season.
“Preparing for snow costs us $200,000,” Bishop said. “So if we don't have snow like this winter, we're gonna go back to spring, and it's gonna cost us another $200,000 to get ready for spring. So that costs us $400,000 and without that snow revenue, we have to find ways to make up to fund the season changeover.”
Bishop said he’s concerned about a large snow dump and not having the adequate staff on hand.
Eddie Zingone, a meteorologist for NWS, said Anchorage is almost 20 inches below average snowfall for this time of year.
The city saw record low snow accumulation in 2015-16 and 1957-58, recording 25.1 inches and 30.4 inches respectively. Zingone said this winter is notable because most of the snow came very early. If the city doesn’t get any more snow, he said this winter will go down as the third least snowy on record.
“For a lot of the winter, we still had a little bit of snow cover left that was residual from those two snowfalls we had near the end of October," Zingone said.
Snow removal companies aren’t the only type of business feeling the impacts of a low snow season.
Dana Drummond owns Hoarding Marmot, a new and used outdoor gear store in Anchorage. He said the majority of outdoor gear is sold in the months preceding winter, but January has been slow.
“I looked at gross sales for January, this past January compared to last year's January. I'd say we're down by not quite a third, but almost a third,” Drummond said.
Drummond said the sale of new gear has slowed because of the weather. Instead, customers are opting for used gear to try new outdoor activities that they might not have tried before. Hoarding Marmot started renting skis last season, and he said the number of rentals hasn’t grown as he was hoping.
On the other hand, he said the store has been routinely selling out of ice skates, likely due to the warm weather pattern bringing freezing rain and exposing ice that would normally be covered in snow.
He said it’s tough as a business owner to be so reliant on something completely out of his control.
“There's definitely a bit of anxiety when you've sort of planned around and anticipated what I felt like was a pretty reasonable way and amount of product and inventory to bring in, especially with our new stuff,” he said. “To find that, hey, that ain't happening.”
There isn’t any snow in the forecast. The National Weather Service is calling for sunny skies and below freezing temperatures for the rest of the week.
Correction: This story has been updated to clarify Be Happy Property Services lost money on monthly contracts.
