The blizzard that created a winter nightmare on roads 2 weeks ago is still causing problems. The problem is the type of storm we had is making it difficult to clean up the roads. On most side streets and parking lots there are several inches of ice mixed with compacted snow.
We asked you on Facebook, "What is it like in your city?" More than a hundred of you responded saying, side streets are covered in ice from Kewanee to Clinton to Moline to Muscatine. Dozens of people say storm clean-up seems worse than ever before.
"In my four years here we've never had a storm like this," says Davenport Public Works Director Mike Clarke.
The Davenport Public Works Department charted out the storm to develop their plan of attack. However, the change over from rain to snow was too fast.
"It was a bit unusual for us," adds Clarke, "By the time we could get out to the outlying neighborhoods, we already an inch of ice or so underneath a couple of inches of snow."
Part of the problem with clearing off the roads is snow plows aren't effective.
"The weight is not sufficient to break the ice off the asphalt and the concrete," says Clarke, "The bond is so strong that the plow blade literally just bumps along on top of the ice."
To scrap ice of the street the city has to use its six road graders, but there's so much ice the blades have to be replaced after one shift.
"You can apply pressure onto the blades and it will separate the ice off the asphalt and split it off the concrete," says Clarke, "It does a much better job. It's not perfect and sometimes it takes more than one pass, but it's the only machine that we have that can do that."
The city is dropping salt on narrow streets, but it's so cold the salt doesn't work most of the time. Besides the road grader, the next best weapon is the sun.
"We've always said that sunshine is the 13th player on the field," says Clarke, "Anytime we can see sunshine and higher temperatures, we'll start to see that ground temperature melt and we'll start to see that surface melt."
If you would like Davenport crews to try and clean up your street, you can call the public works department during business hours at 563-326-7923. A worker will either scrap the ice or put salt down.
