It’s a lot of snow, but it could’ve been worse

The man in charge of removing snow from Iowa’s largest city says we can count ourselves lucky that the weekend storm wasn’t a lot worse. Des Moines caught the most snow from the storm — 12 to 14 inches — but city public works director Bill Stowe says we had a lot of good luck. First, the rain didn’t freeze into ice Friday, and then it turned to snow that fell overnight Friday and into the weekend. He says that’s the ideal situation as people are home for the weekend and off the streets. He says we also missed the sub-zero windchills, allowing the sun to help by melting some of the snow. Stowe has seen the news reports today as the winter storm has dumped double the snow dropped in Des Moines on east coast cities. He says it’s another illustration of how the timing of the storm benefited Iowa, hitting us going into the weekend, instead of the start of the work week. Right now there’s just one major obstacle to removing snow from the capital city — parked cars. He says that’s the number one problem by no comparison to moving snow in this situation. Stowe says the cleanup of this storm will cost Des Moines and estimated 300-thousand dollars.