Cd'A snow plow army armed and ready to go

Appleway is the name of a Coeur d’Alene thoroughfare, but it will also be the moniker of the city’s first snow storm, thanks to local elementary school students who have been naming storms for the Coeur d’Alene street department for more than a decade.

After Appleway comes Storm Best, then Storm Camden, and Storm Dragonfly and Elderberry and Foster …

City streets director Tim Martin doesn’t know for sure when Appleway will strike, covering the city with a plow-worthy blanket of white, but crews will be ready, he said, because they always are.

“We have three crews and they work around the clock until we’re done plowing,” Martin said.

Crews average a little more than 29 hours to plow the entire city, scraping each street after an all-city snow event. Fuel costs run $9,000 for citywide plowing events. Coeur d’Alene averages 13 partial plow events annually in which crews plow arterials, hills and collector routes — the main streets motorists use to get out of their neighborhoods.

“If we get these storms that roll in for two or three days, we’re still right there right around 30 hours,” Martin said.

Crews want to keep roads as clear of snow as possible, Martin said, but scraping all the snow and ice from the roadway isn’t always feasible.

“Bare pavement, although that’s where we want to be, that is not the goal,” Martin said.

It’s partially a matter of resources.

“It costs a lot of money,” he said. “We’re out there working it all the time.”

One of the ways the city saves money is by making its own de-icing salt brine to assist in melting snow and ice from the streets, and keeping snow from sticking to pavement in the first place.

It costs 24 cents a gallon to produce, compared to around a buck a gallon to buy it commercially.

The city doesn’t plow alleys. Officials ask residents to keep cars off streets during snow storms, and to clear their sidewalks as the city ordinance requires.

The city has used snow gates — once called snow shoes — on plows for 20 years to prevent plowing berms into driveways. Each winter the gates are used on more than 65.000 driveways.

“We average over 6,300 miles of plowing every year,” Martin said.

Because plow truck drivers are assigned to the same neighborhoods, they become accustomed to idiosyncrasies.

“It’s like the same guys, in the same equipment, in the same neighborhoods,” council member Woody McEvers said. ”You can wave at them, you can hold your cup of coffee at them. Pretty soon they are like your mailman.”

Martin did not predict the first snowstorm.

“What’s winter going to bring us?” he said. “It’s going to be mild and snowy.”

… So, maybe Storm Gilbert, Storm Hastings, Storm Indiana …