Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

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The forecast: a mighty winter blizzard sure to
dump a record-setting blanket of snow that will grow from inches to
feet overnight, just in time for rush hour.


      When it happened this month in Washington, they called it
"Snowpocalypse" and an overwhelmed city couldn't keep its streets
clear. When it happened last week in Chicago, they called it
"Tuesday" and kept the blacktop black from first flakes to final
drifts.


      "I'd take my plow drivers and put them up against anyone in
North America," said Bobby Richardson, Chicago's snow removal
boss. "Ten inches, a foot of snow? That's nothing for us.
Nothing."


      That's not the case outside of Chicago and other cities in the
American snow belt, where the strategy for cleaning the streets of
winter's wrath is often based on a calculated risk that snow won't
fall where snow usually doesn't. Most years, that gamble pays off.
But this winter, historic blizzards have struck cities where
traffic-snarling snowfalls are rare or even unheard of, exposing
the dangers of counting on the Big One not to hit.


      "You won't see bare pavement for at least three weeks - and
that's if we don't get another snow next week," Steve Shannon, an
operations manager at the Virginia Department of Transportation,
said late last week about suburban Washington's Fairfax County.


      To be fair, the one-two punch of storms that socked the East
Coast this month were record-setting, with snow falling so fast and
deep Washington pulled its plows from the road. A quarter were
knocked out of commission entirely by the struggle of trying to
move so much snow off the streets.

      And yet Richardson and his legendary snow-clearing legions argue
that keeping a city moving during such a blizzard isn't an
insurmountable task. Should as much snow fall on Chicago as it did
in Washington this month, more than 500 plows and 1,000 workers -
hardened by years of work in tough Midwestern winters - are
prepared to wipe it all away.

      "Chicago would get through such a storm, and while it would not
be total normalcy, the city would still function," said Matt
Smith, a spokesman for the city's Department of Streets and
Sanitation.

      Buried by snow this month, cities across the Mid-Atlantic states
were forced to scramble to locate plows, hiring hundreds from
private contractors and seeking help from neighboring states.


      In Philadelphia, crews struggled Tuesday to clear sidestreets
after two storms dumped 40 inches of snow in less than a week. They
used small front-loaders to fit down streets too narrow for plows.


They could only take small bites of snow and ice at a time, making
removal time consuming, said Maura Kennedy, spokeswoman for Mayor
Michael Nutter.


      No place seemed more unprepared for the weather than the
Washington area: The federal government shut down for days as
District residents complained of a spotty, haphazard response that
left some streets all but abandoned.


      And in the South, where even a light dusting is enough to
paralyze commuters until the weather warms up and melts away the
problem, most major cities have only a handful of plows - if any at
all. In Dallas, a city of 1.2 million people but not a single
dedicated snow plow, authorities count on snowflakes melting the
minute they touch the ground.


      That didn't happen last week, when the worst storm in nearly
five decades dropped more than a foot of snow in northern Texas.
All the city could do was send reconnaissance teams to identify
slick spots and direct trucks to spread sand.

      "Historically, that has handled every situation we face," city
spokesman Frank Librio said.


      So, which city is best at cleaning up after the Big One?
Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., or some other snowy locale? Those who study
the business of providing such services say looking at comparable
data is the only way to credibly assess whether one snow removal
strategy beats another. But not only does such information not
exist, the hundreds of variables involved complicate any effort to
devise a master strategy.


      For example, St. Paul, Minn., is far hillier than its Twin
Cities counterpart of Minneapolis, which is filled with more alleys
and more cars - obstacles plows must dodge. Each snowfall is
different, too: light, powdery snow falls when the temperatures
drop close to zero, and wet, heavy snow comes when the temperature
hovers around freezing.


      "The snow and ice community has struggled with this topic for
years as the methods, equipment, availability of resources and most
importantly, level of service and winter severity, vary enormously
from state to state, region to region," said Caleb Dobbins, a
state maintenance engineer at the New Hampshire Department of
Transportation.


      What can be measured is preparation. With an annual average
snowfall of 38 inches, Chicago maintains a fleet of 300 trucks
specifically designed for removing snow, 200 others that can be
fitted with plow blades and budgeted $17 million for the work this
winter. Washington, with an average of 19.4 inches of snow each
year, has 200 trucks that can be fitted with blades and a snow
budget of $6 million.


      Some Washington residents say the district is in a no-win
situation: slammed for not being prepared when the Big One hits,
but likely to face criticism if it spent much more on snow removal.


      "I don't know how prudent it would be to throw millions of
taxpayer dollars at a problem that may not rear its head in a
century," said Mike DeBonis, a columnist for the Washington City
Paper.


      If the already cash-strapped city wanted to spend more on snow,
he added, it would be forced to cut other, arguably higher priority
services, such as garbage collection or tree trimming.


      Head farther South and the preparation naturally gets even
thinner. In Pensacola, Fla., there is no budget for snow removal.
The city has a fertilizer spreader that can work with sand, but no
snow-clearing master plan that in snowbelt cities typically
includes target times for clearing streets.


      "If we knew a cold front was coming in, I'd have to go to a
pool company and buy some sodium chloride," said Pensacola public
works director Al Garza. "Every time we take precautions, (we)
stockpile some masonry sands in different locations and end up not
using it."


      Then comes a month like February, when snow covers some ground
in 49 states; two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow cover
Friday. While Garza was safe, snow fell just 40 miles north of
Pensacola last week. After brief respite over the weekend, it was
snowing again in Washington on Monday.


      The consequences of failing to clear that snow can be deadly.
Each year, more than 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,000
injured in vehicle crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement,
according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. A storm that
shuts down roads also closes the door of business, costing
communities hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales taxes and
revenue from income taxes.


      "The benefits of being better prepared far outweigh the costs -
because it costs so much when the Big One does hit," said Greg
Cohen, executive director of the Roadway Safety Foundation, whose
own street in Washington was still unplowed several days after the
storms hit.

      Then there's the politics of snow: Mayors know failure to remove
it can cost them their jobs.

      Every mayor knows the story of Chicago's Michael Bilandic, the
incumbent who lost in the 1979 Democratic primary after the city
failed to clear streets fast enough after a storm. These days,
voters embrace Mayor Richard M. Daley in part because the crews at
Streets and Sanitation keeps the city in business every winter: The
city's public schools haven't had a "snow day" in more than a
decade.

      "I got more calls from mayors during snow storms than at any
other time," said Tom Eggum, a retired public works director in
St. Paul. "It's probably because of what happened in Chicago."


      While nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area
that gets some snow each year, there's a consensus Chicago gets rid
of it as well as any place else. The city received an A grade for
clearing its main streets from the Illinois Policy Institute
following last week's storm, which broke the single-day snowfall
record for February by dropping more than a foot of snow on the
city.


      A cool confidence flows through Richardson's downtown snow
command center, where the city's deputy streets commissioner sleeps
on a cot so he can work around the clock during a storm. He
oversees a dozen dispatchers who comb through satellite data, watch
giant screens showing up to 1,000 live camera shots of major
streets, and call plow drivers to let them know they've missed a
spot or need to drop their blade a little lower.


      The drivers at the other end of a dispatcher's call are often
under the most pressure, intently focused for 12 or more hours at a
time on the road ahead, anxious about clipping curbs, cars or even
pedestrians as they clear Chicago's 9,500 miles of street lanes.
They're helped by a merciless towing operation that clears
illegally parked cars to make room for the plows.


      Cohen, the Roadway Safety Foundation chief, said Washington and
other cities ill-prepared for snow should heed the lessons of this
February winter and start preparing for the next Big One by
building up that kind of snow-fighting force. But he doesn't have
faith it will happen: As voters, people might remember
street-clearing failures, but as taxpayers, they tend to forget as
soon as the snow melts.


      "People say it should be done," he said. "But then no one
connects the dots that someone has to pay for it."


      Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko and Sarah Karush in
Washington, JoAnn Loviglio in Philadelphia, Jeff Karoub in Detroit,
Briana Bierschbach in St. Paul, Minn., Linda Steward Ball in
Dallas, Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y., and Scott Bauer in
Madison, Wis., contributed to this report.

Gallery

Weather and Climate News

Buried by snow this month, cities across the Mid-Atlantic states
were forced to scramble to locate plows, hiring hundreds from
private contractors and seeking help from neighboring states.

Comparing how well cities clean up after snowstorms

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