Posted Tuesday, February 2, 2010 --- 11:10 a.m.

SNOW PLOWING UPDATES
by Alan Schumacher, Streets Superintendent

Snow has accumulated to various depths at various locations throughout the City of Madison as a result of this recent storm. Unofficial snow accumulations are reaching the 3" level in certain parts of the City where they are slightly over 2" in other parts of the City.

As a result of the accumulations approaching 3" in parts of Madison, the Streets Division has decided to plow all City streets during the afternoon and evening hours today. We will begin our plowing efforts at 3:00 pm and hope to complete the entire City by around midnight. We will have approximately 175 pieces of equipment plowing our over 1700 lane miles of streets.

Until 3:00 pm, Streets crews will concentrate on the main arterials, our salt routes, in order to try to get them in relatively good driving conditions prior to the afternoon rush hour.

The City of Madison will not be declaring a Snow Emergency for this event as we are not sure that official totals will reach the 3" level. In addition to not being sure we will reach the 3" threshold, we are expecting some above freezing conditions to arrive for Thursday and Friday that will assist in some melting and the fact that we have little to no hardpacked snow and ice on our residential streets that will cause difficulties.