City, MU face winter snow storms
Published Jan. 23, 2007
Three winter-weather incidents impacted Columbia during December and January, making daily life a little harder for some students.
Although each event involved a different type of winter weather, certain procedures are the same. The Columbia Public Works Department works on larger, high-priority streets first, according to Public Works Operations Manager Mary Ellen Lea. Thae department will determine when the most trafficked areas are safe before working on secondary streets. The process to ready Public Works vehicles also stays the same.
"Each event, we always go through all the trucks and make sure they are mechanically sound and ready for operation," Lea said. "We load them with the salt mixture and get them ready to go."
The first snowstorm, which occurred on the evening of Nov. 30, resulted in more than 15 inches of snow and the first cancellation of classes for MU since 1998.
"We had the first event ... which was a once-in-10-year event so it naturally would put anyone in a bind," Lea said.
The type of precipitation in the first event made it more difficult for both drivers and pedestrians on campus to travel — even on the next Monday when classes resumed at the university.
"Every storm is different," Lea said. "If you get a bunch of ice under the snow, like in the first event when it sleeted before the snow fell, that's totally different than just some wet snow that comes down."
Off-campus housing also had to work with the severe weather so residents were able to leave their homes and travel.
"The first time that we had the biggest snow, it was three or four days getting my parking lot cleared out, but we cleared it out before the city cleared Ashland Road," said Verna Drennan, manager of the Ashland Manor apartment complex.
Drennan said Ashland Manor officials hired contactors to come in and clear the driveway and to return later to plow the parking lot after some of the cars had been moved.
The second winter weather storm was primarily ice and included slow traveling times on major highways, including Interstate 70. The ice complicated students' return to campus by slowing highway travel and delaying or canceling flights in major Midwestern cities.
"It was really icy, and I was really scared to come back," sophomore Laura Quiason said.
In events where streets are icy, the Public Works Department drops a salt and cinder mixture to melt the ice and to make the streets safe.
The third winter weather event occurred this past weekend and came down as a wet snow, Lea said. The wet snow was easier to plow than the previous two incidents.
Freshman Jessica Bukaty said she thought the roads became less dangerous because of clearing and salting efforts by the city.
"The farthest I went off campus was to The Reserve," Bukaty said. "It was so much easier than driving on campus because they cleared it right away."
Campus Facilities Landscape Services handles snow clearing and treatment of streets on MU campus.
There is no further severe weather in the forecast for Columbia this month, but Drennan said she is still seeing the effects of the weekend's storm.
"All of our sidewalks, none have ice on them," Drennan said. "The drive itself does not have ice on it. There's a few places where there is ice on the parking lot, but tomorrow it's supposed to be up in the 38s, and it will probably melt off."