Snow is piling up in Port

“We’re running out of room quick,” Port Washington Street Supt. J.D. Hoile said Monday.

Hoile was referring to room to store snow after roughly 20 inches of snow fell on the city in the past week.

Roughly 9.7 inches of snow fell Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 25 and 26, and another eight to nine inches on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 30 and 31.

Street Department crews worked throughout the weekend to clear the snow, and they were back at it early Tuesday, hauling snow from the sidewalks in downtown Port.

And, because of the amount of snow, the Street Department had to expand its hauling, Hoile said. In addition to removing snow from downtown, the department removed snow from the streets surrounding St. Mary’s Church, which are extremely narrow, and from Grand Avenue between Moore Road and Spring Street, since there is no parkway to store snow there.

They also will remove snow from areas around the schools and intersections where visibility would otherwise be blocked, he said.

“When we get this much snow, we’ve got to do some other places too,” Hoile said.

By Monday afternoon, the Street Department had filled the available space at its Moore Street garage with huge piles of snow and had stored a significant amount of snow in the marina parking lot.

“We’ve still got some room there,” Hoile said. Then, the department will use some of the Upper Lake Park lots to store snow.

“After that, we’ll have to get creative,” he said.

That time may be coming sooner rather than later. According to the National Weather Service, the area is expected to be hit by several more inches of snow — and rain — on Thursday, Feb. 4.

And a surge of Arctic air is expected to settle in for at least a few days after that.

Before last Tuesday’s almost 10-inch snowfall, Hoile had nothing to worry about. Little snow had fallen this winter.

But since Jan. 25, that’s almost all the Street Department has been doing, he said.

“We’re not getting any other work done,” Hoile said.

Over the weekend, he noted, “we were plowing almost all day long.”

The department’s new low-salt policy has been working well, Hoile said, noting the city has used about 40% less salt during the last couple snowstorms than it otherwise would.

Pretreating the streets with a salt brine has “definitely been helping,” Hoile said, both with reducing the use of salt and keeping the streets passable.

“I’ve had people comment that the traction is better,” he said.

That’s especially important since Port is the city of seven hills, and both the downtown and the police and fire stations are in downtown, he said.

“The only way to get out is up the steep hills,” he said.

When the snow starts falling in the evening, which has been the case this past week, Hoile said he has a couple members of the plowing crew come in around 8 p.m. and work until 11 p.m., when they’re replaced by a couple other plow drivers.

About 3 or 4 a.m., the entire plowing crew comes in to open the streets before traffic gets going.

On Sunday, he noted, the full crew worked throughout the day.

Hoile estimated the crew is logging an extra 15 hours or so of work due to the snow.

But despite the work that recent snowfalls have brought, Hoile said, there was one bright spot Monday afternoon.

The sun was shining and the weather was relatively warm, allowing the snow to melt from the streets.

“Today’s a perfect day for melting snow,” he said.