Road conditions, cancellations, latest forecast and more

CEDAR RAPIDS - A winter like the icy, snow-pounded winter of 2007-2008 is the one against which Craig Hanson gauges his preparations.

Hanson, the city's public works maintenance manager, said that year brought the city 200 percent of the snow, not to mention ice, of a typical Cedar Rapids winter. But he said this week that the city is equipped this winter to fight back just such a challenge.

“We're equally prepared or better prepared for (what is needed for) a 200-percent winter,” Hanson said.

He said the city has on hand 5,300 tons of salt and access to another 10,000 tons, if needed. That is significantly more salt than the city has had in the past five years. Three years ago, the city had on hand 3,600 tons of salt and scampered to come up with another 7,200 as the winter took a turn for the worse.

The price of salt, $68.02 per ton, is up 2 percent from a year ago, Hanson said.

He added that the city will create more brine from salt this winter to spray on bridges and streets than in the past in order to delay the time in which ice adheres to pavement.

In Iowa City, John Sobaski, assistant streets superintendent, said this week he, too, is ready for winter.

That preparation includes 3,500 tons of rock salt with a “chill-melt liquid enhancer,” 13 plow-ready vehicles and a 50-50 mix of sand and salt for colder temperatures and higher wind chills in what Sobaski called the city's “bunker.”

In Cedar Rapids, Hanson said he relies on an assortment of weather forecasts, from the National Weather Service to the Iowa Department of Transportation to local television stations, to make his own best analysis of how much snow or ice is coming and when.

This winter, the city has a pile of sand in the back lot of its public works facility at the corner of Sixth Street and 15th Avenue SW that is available to the public free of charge.

Hanson also noted that the city has placed pink-tipped stakes on more than 200 flood-damaged properties. The stakes will quickly identify properties on which city crews now will have the responsibility to shovel snow.

More than 200 properties at 15 minutes a property means 50 hours of work per snowfall, Hanson calculated. It also means, he said, that he and his supervisors will likely be called on to do some of the sidewalk cleaning.

“I've got a shovel in the back of my city vehicle, if that's what it takes,” Hanson said.

Cancellations

Pinpoint Doppler Radar

Road conditions

Street crews prepare for first snowstorm

The first measurable snowfall in the forecast means street crews in parts of Eastern Iowa are getting ready to roll.

The winter of 2007-2008 is a yardstick used to measure about how bad things can get. That was a winter with basically double the snow and ice of normal. With that in mind, the city of Cedar Rapids has stockpiled more than 5,000 tons of salt with another 10,000 tons on reserve for quick delivery. That's about 50% more than the city had going into the worst winter in recent memory.

Crews have switched to a winter schedule which means more people are available for plowing and ready to be called in as the snow falls.

There's about the same amount of equipment to push the snow off roads, but even there, the city has made improvements by updating a lot of its machinery. "The fleet is much improved compared to three years ago due to age and the ability is equal or better than it has been from three years ago," said Craig Hanson with Cedar Rapids Public Works.

Public works employees are also going to try a trick from the past. Ten years ago, the city mixed calcium chloride with the salt to enable it to keep melting snow and ice at even lower temperatures. The city stopped the practice due to budget issues. But, there's money in the budget now and stock-piles of the chemicals are on hand to do the job this winter.

By Dave Franzman