Surprise Snowstorm Meant Long, Extra Hours for Street, Road Crews

It was a week ago (02.20) that areas of northeast Iowa woke up to as much as 15 inches of snow that fell from Thursday night, February 19, into Friday morning, February 20th.

New Hampton received over a foot of new snow, with the City enacting a Snow Emergency to aid crews in getting the streets cleared. Still, it was a time-consuming process.

According to New Hampton Street Superintendent Kyle Anderson, their crew of five each put in 25 hours of snow removal over Friday (02.20) and Saturday (02.21), for a total of 125 hours. That included plowing streets and helping Croell Redi Mix fill dump trucks to haul away snow from the business district.

Anderson says he was informed by Croell New Hampton plant manager Dylan Brown, it took over 25 hours for their dump trucks to haul the snow away, bringing the total hours for snow recovery efforts to over 150 hours, with some 230 truckloads of snow hauled to Stoltz and Mikkelson Parks in New Hampton.

In Charles City, street crews worked to clear over 10 inches of fresh snow in the wake of the storm, which Street Superintendent Tony Stonecypher estimated that crews had over 100 hours combined last Friday alone. He says another 70 man hours combined on Saturday focused on snow haul away.

As of Wednesday (02.25), Stonecypher said they were still working on hauling snow from City parking lots as well as knocking back snow on some curb lines across town.

During Tuesday’s (02.24) Board of Supervisors meeting, Floyd County Engineer Adam Miller summed up what secondary road crews went through.

The forecast for this weekend (Feb. 28-Mar 1), calls for the possibility of 1-2 inches of snow for most of the region. Though a Winter Weather Advisory is to be in effect from 6 am to 6 pm Saturday (02.28) for Howard, Winneshiek and Allamakee counties in northeast Iowa, where 4-5 inches of new snow are possible.