This December ‘way easier’ on C.R.’s snow budget

CEDAR RAPIDS - With normal temperatures, most of Eastern Iowa would be shoveling and plowing its way through a foot of snow right now.

Given the rule of thumb that an inch of rain equals 13 inches of snow, that's what the 24-hour rainfall recorded at The Eastern Iowa Airport would have left on Cedar Rapids' streets.

Craig Hanson, the city's public works maintenance manager, will take the rain and the 50-degree temperatures. The city had 3 to 4 inches of snow on the ground last Dec. 14, he pointed out, and has 5 to 6 inches by mid-December most years.

City spreaders have been dispatched three times so far this season to battle freezing rain. With about 10 percent of the snowfall season now past, Hanson figures, the city has seen 0.8 inch of snow at most and no accumulation.

“It's way easier on overtime,” Hanson said. “The top issue for salt and sand mix is the number of storms you see, and the number of ice storms.”

Hanson estimated that his crews have “a couple of hundred hours less of overtime” this year than in December 2010.

Statistically, it hasn't been that much warmer. Through Tuesday, December's average daily temperature of 27.5 degrees is just 1.5 degrees warmer than usual.

That's thanks largely to last Friday and Saturday, though, when the high temperature was 10 degrees lower than average.