Many roads remain snow-covered and icy

Plows will be working for days to clear away the snow from our two-day storm this week. State Patrol Sergeant Richard Pierce has seen some of the roads in north-central Iowa where the final night of the storm topped off snow totals at 16 inches in some places. From the 182 mile-marker to the Minnesota border he’s seen highway surfaces clear to partially snowcovered, and adds in some places the shoulders were very icy. He sums it up as normal winter driving conditions. Sergeant Pierce adds a lot of the secondary roads have a lot of snow and ice remaining, and some city streets have ice under the snow which makes them particularly treacherous. Pierce says he’d advise not you to not underestimate the roads — because even if it seems they’re mostly clear, there may some ice underneath. In that north-central part of the state where snowfall totals were among the highest from this storm, there are gates on the on-ramps to Interstate-35 that can be swung shut and padlocked to prevent optimistic motorists from going onto the highway when travel’s been declared unsafe, but the trooper says those gates were NOT closed during this week’s snowstorm.