Snowstorms, freezing temps put pressure on Santa Fe's snowplow crews

Jan. 12—Tourism sites across the web tout Santa Fe for having 300 days of sunshine a year.

This winter, the city might have missed the memo.

Multiple back-to-back snowstorms, with more on the way, have made for a cold and soggy new year in the City Different. They've also put a strain on the city's snow-removal crews, which have been working around the clock to clear snow and ice from roadways.

"It's been a lot," said Public Works Director Regina Wheeler, who oversees the city's streets team.

In a Thursday news release, the city said the Water Division is measuring more snow in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed than has ever been recorded at this time of year.

Wheeler described that as a "double-edged sword": Lots of snow is good for the environment and the city's water resources, but it makes for a lot of work for her team.

At a City Council meeting Wednesday, City Manager John Blair said he understands the frustration of residents who are unhappy about the level of snow and ice remaining on roads, but he said street crews are "genuinely some of the hardest-working employees in the city of Santa Fe."

In an interview, he said sunshine is the city's biggest snow removal asset.

"On a normal winter day when it's not in the single digits, most anything the sun touches will be melted by midday, and that goes a long way to help the city get the roads cleared," Blair said.

With temperatures remaining below freezing, Wheeler said her crews have been putting in a lot of work to get streets cleared in the past several weeks.

"It's not common for us to deal with these conditions of snowstorm after snowstorm that don't melt; that's kind of rare for us," she said.

Meteorologist Scott Overpeck with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque said most of what Santa Fe is seeing is "a typical winter weather pattern."

"It just so happens it's been a little more active," he said.

That's in part because this is an El Niño year, he said, which typically brings more precipitation.

The city roads are broken up into five districts for snow removal, and during snowy conditions each district will be patrolled by one snowplow.

During snow operations, the streets team works 24/7, Wheeler said, with crews working 12-hour shifts of noon to midnight and midnight to noon.

Each shift generally has eight to 10 people, depending on resources, she said, with one person to a snowplow along with a mechanic, a supervisor checking conditions throughout the city and people operating dump trucks and grading trucks as needed.

Graders are particularly useful for dirt roads, Wheeler said, and dump trucks are useful to haul snow out of areas such as around the Plaza, where it could become a problem if it all melted into slush.

The crews don't wait until it starts snowing to go out, she noted.

"We watch the weather reports, and we trigger snow operations hours before it starts snowing," she said.

The city uses a couple of materials to treat the roads, depending on conditions. It will put down scoria, a dark-colored volcanic rock that gives the streets a reddish cast; scoria mixed with salt; or Ice Slicer, a mixture of minerals that breaks down ice better than salt in especially low temperatures.

"We used quite a bit of it this week and last week," she said of the Ice Slicer.

Salt is better at melting ice at relatively higher temperatures, and scoria induces melting by creating texture and because it is a darker color, which warms up faster.

Wheeler said many workers on the streets team have been with the city for a long time and have a good sense of what material to use when. For example, only scoria is used on the Plaza because salt can't be used on brick.

The city has a three-tiered priority system for plowing streets. The top priorities are main thoroughfares such as Cerrillos Road, Airport Road and Rodeo Road. Next on the list are streets where a school or hospital is located and other commercial streets, such as Rufina Street and Camino Carlos Rey. Third-priority streets are higher-volume collector streets such as Old Santa Fe Trail and Governor Miles Road.

At Wednesday's council meeting, Blair reminded residents St. Francis Drive is under the jurisdiction of the New Mexico Department of Transportation.

Wheeler said the city doesn't typically remove snow from residential streets, though it does handle some that are deemed problem areas. However, residents can request snow removal on their street through the city's constituent services portal.

Judging the need for snow-removal resources can be difficult, especially with climate change shifting typical weather patterns. Wheeler said it hardly snows at all in some winters, while this season has been more of a strain.

She has enough people on her crews for an average winter, she added, but is working with city management to get some new plows.

"Our backup equipment is really old, and it would be better if it was newer," she said. "We have the basic amount, but you want to have a deep backup bench, and our backup bench needs improvements."

Wheeler asked people to give snowplows a wide berth and to remember to drive carefully with snow and ice on the roads. She also encouraged residents to make use of the city's constituent services portal.

She isn't aware of any instances in which weather conditions were so bad the city didn't send crews out to clear snow, she said. "I think people count on us to be out there."

After a short break in the series of storms, snow is expected to start falling again around 6 a.m. Sunday morning. Crews will hit the roads at midnight.