ST. PAUL - Living down a dead-end road, Erin Bochon understands that she's near the bottom of the priority list when it comes to snow clearing after winter storms.
Two days of extreme wind early in the week, coupled with some snowfall ahead of that, resulted in challenging road conditions across a large portion of the Lakeland. School buses were cancelled for two days in many areas, and municipalities faced challenges while clearing the snowy obstacles.
Rather than see her kids miss additional days of school, Bochon says the family has been using a snowmobile to get her two elementary-aged kids down the drifted road, where her mom waits in a warm vehicle, ready to get the kids the rest of the way to St. Paul.
Bochon is understanding of the challenges that the County of St. Paul crews are facing, noting some of the drifts are "rock solid."
A snowfall event that saw three to 10 inches of snowfall just days before a windstorm moved through the St. Paul region resulted in challenging conditions for the County of St. Paul public works crews.
While the snowfall itself wasn't hard to deal with, it was the fact that as soon as roads were cleared, strong winds moved into the area, says Director of Public Works Daniel Reid.
"It blew all that fresh powder from the fields and ditches into sharp hardened drifts across our roads - the type of drifts you can drive over without breaking through," he explains. "This throws all conventional timelines out the window."
The drifts wreak havoc on even the largest of the County's equipment.
"A road that normally takes two passes, now takes four to get open. We have had to add extra equipment to this effort to help remove snow, including loaders and skid steers. The drifts are so hard that the graders take a run at them to break through," he described.
The wind storm began Monday and lasted into Tuesday. As of Thursday, there were still roads in the County that were completely blocked.
