The amount of snow that has piled up on city streets came quickly, but not in unusual amounts. The storage spots for the snows of the streets are in no way nearing capacity, said Transportation Manager Al Clark.
"We aren't getting close to filling them up yet," he said, adding that "We haven't really ever run into that problem. The locations we have have always been able to handle the amount."
There are two main dump areas: 18th Avenue next to the soccer fields, and Guay Road near L.C. Gunn Park. Two other sites, one in the Vanway area and one in the West Austin area, are also used to a lesser degree.
The main impediment to street clearing caused by the recent warm weather is not dumping it, it is gathering it up.
"When the snow is wet, the [city's industrial-sized] snow blower doesn't work that well, when it is heavier and stickier, so where we have windrows along the curb line we try to pull that out from where the water is and then pick it all up," he explained. "We are running the blower where we can on day shifts, where the traffic isn't so bad, to catch up on the windrows. We got behind on them, from sheer volume, and the warmth doesn't help."
When the snow is trucked to the snow dump locations, heavy equipment pushes it into the giant piles. They have no trouble pushing it into place even if it arrives wet and heavy.
The warm weather allowed some of the snow dump piles to shrink a little, much like the snowbanks along local driveways receded. There is more room to throw what snow is still to come, but city crews are not making any wagers. Clark said "in recent memory we have had heavy snows as late as March, so we just take Mother Nature as she comes."
What is likely, he said, was the recent warm trend doing a lot of damage to pavement. The melted water would erode the bottom of potholes as it sat there in puddles. Also, siad Clark, the melted water would seep into cracks then expand when frozen again. This will bust up pavement but you won't see much of that damage until spring when the ice and frost melts off and leaves its carnage behind. Then the snow crews change clothes and take on the potholes.
