DENVER - When John Brinks' car got stuck in a snowbank on a normally busy downtown street Thursday, he got frustrated.

Some sidewalks were already shoveled, even though a massive storm was still dropping light snow. But Brinks, 34, hadn't seen a single snowplow since the blizzard began, despite Denver city officials' reassurances that they were throwing all the equipment they had at the cleanup effort.

"This is Colorado," he said. "We should be prepared for this."

Mayor John Hickenlooper urged patience, saying crews were working around-the-clock to dig the city out from more than 2 feet of snow that high winds sculpted into 3- or 4-foot drifts.

"We're certainly pushing as hard as we can," Hickenlooper said.

Even if the city had two or three times as many plows, it would not have gone faster because of the heavy snowfall and wind, he said.

"The question has not been do we have enough plows The question is, my goodness, what an incredible amount of snow we got in a short amount of time with a lot of wind. It kept blowing back on top of us," he said.

Some residents said city crews relied too heavily on magnesium chloride, which is sprayed on the roads before a storm hits to prevent ice from forming.

"The city's content to drop mag chloride and hope for the best, but you really need to move the snow," electrician Mike Quigley, 57, said Wednesday. "This is not shaking out."

In Denver and elsewhere, the strategy was to plow interstates and major highways first, then focus on highway exit and entrance ramps and smaller streets, with neighborhood roads getting the lowest priority.

Not only do crews have to clear the roads, they have to haul away that snow so it doesn't clog up parking lots and side streets.

Denver had about 65 snowplows running 24-hours-a day, and Public Works manager Bill Vidal said his biggest concern was the drivers' ability to sleep. The city has about 3,600 lane-miles of neighborhood and larger roads. A lane-mile is one mile of one lane on a road.

The state Transportation Department had about 800 plows operating a 24-hour schedule across the state, with some drivers from Western Colorado, where the storm was less intense, joining the effort on the Eastern Plains, said spokeswoman Stacey Stegman. She said the agency is responsible for 23,061 lane-miles across Colorado.

Colorado Springs, with its 1,500 lane-miles, had all of its 43 snowplows and other equipment working, city spokesman Tim Burke said Wednesday. He did not immediately return calls Thursday.

Slowing the effort, Stegman said, were an estimated 600 abandoned cars scattered along roadways in the Denver metro area, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and in northeastern Colorado.

At Denver International Airport, where snowbound runways closed Wednesday and weren't expected to reopen until midday Friday, Hickenlooper said an "armada" of plows was working to clear away snowdrifts several feet deep. In the heart of the storm Wednesday afternoon, airport spokesman Steve Snyder said runways were covered again 30 minutes after plows cleared them.

In rural Arapahoe County east of Denver, snowplow drivers were coming up against 7-foot snowdrifts, said Phil Spence, a bureau chief for the sheriff's office. He said plow drivers could only go eight feet at a time before they had to back up and try again to clear the roads.

A public works official in Minneapolis, which averages about 50 inches of snow a year, said he could sympathize with Denver officials getting criticism about getting the streets plowed. Denver averaged about 48 inches of snow in the past 10 winters, according to the National Weather Service.

"You can't be everywhere at once," said Mike Kennedy, director of winter operations for the Minneapolis public works department. "A plow makes a pass when you're getting snowfalls at that rate and an hour later you can't tell a plow's been there."

Vidal said plow crews would continue working around the clock until cleanup was complete.

"I know that there is great frustration with people who feel stranded in their homes because the neighborhood streets have a lot of snow on them," he said.

Vidal said some residents likely would have to wait until Saturday until a plow could reach their street.

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Information:

Wyoming Roads - WYDOT

CST Weather Page

Road Cams

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