Moscow’s 2021 began with less precipitation than usual and a snow dump in February. This set city maintenance, now anticipating this spring’s weather, into action the past month to deal with snow.Deputy City Supervisor Tyler Palmer deals with city maintenance and has lived in Moscow since 2009.
“There’s actually a pretty intensive amount of preparation that starts before the snow falls,” Palmer said. “We have a pretty robust snow plan.”
Palmer said preparation includes anti-icing, de-icing, plow strategies and more. These all rely on specific weather conditions.
“There’s just a lot of different factors that make each storm a little different in how we deal with it,” Palmer said. “All those have to be taken into account.”
Information like time of precipitation, wind level and moisture content of snow all play a role. Each storm has a customized plan based on the specifics.
Palmer described this year’s snow as tacky and less slippery. Light, fluffy snow can be more difficult to plow. When it becomes compacted by vehicles, it sticks to the ground.
Colder weather makes long-standing snow harden, become icy and difficult to remove.
While Moscow tends to get a decent amount of snow, Palmer said around two feet of snow was accumulated within just two weeks in February.
According to Palmer, Moscow’s average snow is roughly 49 inches. Just in February, Moscow received 30 inches of snow.
Heavy snow leads to accumulation on the sides of streets, which are already narrow. The snow gathers at the sides of streets while a snowplow comes through and created a snow berm. A snow berm is the accumulation of snow due to plowing or shoveling, and can add an additional challenge to those working to clear the streets.
“When we plow downtown Moscow, because of the on-street parking, we can’t just plow over to the edge of the road,” Palmer. “We actually have to plow to the center of the road and then haul the snow off so we can maintain parking.”
With heavy snow, the city has to consider the maintenance of their trucks and having locations to dump snow.
The evaluation of equipment and materials, as well as their maintenance and preparation, are important to having the operation ready to go.
The city does not have dedicated snowplows, but attachments for trucks are used year around.
Besides just keeping the roads clean, city maintenance has a variety of other concerns to deal with. They have to consider on-street parking, garbage pickup and the potential of water meters freezing.
“There’s a lot of peripheral things you deal with other than snow,” Palmer said.
As a smaller city, Palmer said much of the staff has overlapping responsibilities. Those that deal with snow removal also have to deal with the aftermath of flooding.
“Paradise Creek is a very volatile creek,” Palmer said. “It comes up really quick.”
Quickly melting snow and rain on top of it can bring concerns about the creek flooding. In 2019, Moscow saw historic levels of flooding in the city.
Professor of Hydrology Timothy Link said the sudden snow dump in February can be explained by the current La Niña weather pattern.
La Niña’s have below-average temperatures and above-average precipitation. This year, Moscow had a dry January, which Link explains may have led to the great precipitation in February, but lesser snow overall.
While it is difficult to pin recent events to a longer-lasting trend, Link expected to see a colder and wetter spring.
“Longer-term projections are basically that January, February and March are predicted to be colder and wetter than normal,” Link said.
This weather trend is expected to continue through March and April.
Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @haadiyatariq