Area street, road crews make overnight plans

Darkness will force Linn County plows off the roads at 4 p.m., to return 12 hours later, County Engineer Steve Gannon said Thursday.

"Once it gets dark it's hard for them to stay out on our system," Gannon said.

It should take three to four hours to clear major paved roads once plows head back out, but "it depends on what the wind's going to do," Gannon said.

In Iowa City, "it's been difficult to stay ahead of the snow and blowing snow," said John Sobaski, the city's assistant street superintendent. "We'll go down a street and a little later it's all snowed in again."

Sobaski said the city's 12 plow trucks will work until midnight.

"We'll drop back to a smaller crew, then go full force again at 5 a.m.," he said.

Iowa City's snowfall wasn't enough to trigger the city's snow emergency rules, Sobaski said.

Gannon said Linn County crews were making headway until winds picked up around mid-morning.

"Essentially everything you do is going to get undone by weather," he said.

In Cedar Rapids, residents saw a much heavier snowfall.

Late Thursday afternoon, Craig Hanson, the city's public works maintenance manager, reported that the city took on between 6 and 9 inches of snow, with the north side of the city getting more than the south side, though some of the worst drifting was on the south side, particularly on 76th Avenue SW and Wright Brothers Boulevard SW.

In fact, the city had to close down 76th Avenue SW on Thursday when winds of 35 to 40 miles created a white-out condition.

City crews, Hanson said, had to withdraw plows from Wright Brothers Boulevard SW for a time for the same white-out conditions after a truck driving on the wrong side of the boulevard came at a city plow.

Hanson said the intense Thursday wind complicated work for city crews, and he said dropping temperatures into the evening Thursday were making crews hustle to finish the cleanup of residential streets before the snow on them froze.

Warm temperatures in the downtown at the start of the storm on Wednesday evening allowed the first couple of inches of snow there to melt, making six to eight inches of snow seem more like three to five inches, he said.

Among the assignments for city crews on Friday, he added, is the cleanup 23 miles of city sidewalk.

Iowa snowfall totals:

MARSHALLTOWN --- 13.0

MOUNT AUBURN --- 12.5

DUBUQUE --- 12.1

OELWEIN ---  11.7

HAZLETON --- 11.2

BELLEVUE --- 11.0

TOLEDO --- 11.0

VINTON --- 11.0

GUTTENBERG --- 11.0

EDGEWOOD --- 10.8

ELDORA --- 10.0

WATERLOO AIRPORT --- 10.0

GRUNDY CENTER --- 10.0

CLAYTON CENTER --- 10.0

MCGREGOR --- 10.0

LITTLETON --- 9.8

CLUTIER --- 8.0

LOWDEN --- 8.0

MONONA --- 8.0

VICTOR --- 7.0

WATERVILLE --- 7.0

CEDAR RAPIDS --- 6.5

SPRINGVILLE --- 6.5

PEOSTA --- 6.5

BELLE PLAINE --- 6.5

TIPTON --- 6.5

ATKINS --- 6.2

CALMAR --- 6.0

DECORAH --- 6.0

ANAMOSA --- 5.0

NORTH LIBERTY --- 4.9

MONTEZUMA --- 4.5

OSKALOOSA --- 4.0

IOWA FALLS --- 4.0

SWISHER --- 3.4

OTTUMWA --- 2.0

IOWA CITY --- 1.8