Area snow removal crews are working around the clock to clear streets for safe travel

After another 9 inches of snow on Saturday, it’s beginning to feel like one of the snowiest months of February ever recorded in Lincoln will never end.

Snow plow crews were out at 5 am on Sunday and Monday morning.

Some of the city and county roads are still completely covered in snow, and ice has formed underneath, making clearing the roads a challenge.

“With the ground temperature, before the storm happened, being right around freezing, and then we got the rain, a little bit of sleet. The snow came on top of it and actually kind of insulates it, and then it just slowly starts to freeze. So you end up with a couple inches of frozen ice & snow that has really attached itself to the surface of that asphalt,” said Ron Bohaty, Superintendent of Road maintenance in Lancaster County.

Bohaty says the first priority right now is getting the cement roads cleared.

County crews plowed the north and south routes on Sunday.

Then the east and west roads Monday.

“We’re actually using motor graters on some of the asphalt to basically push down and actually peel that ice and snow off the roads so we can get the majority of it off so we can then put the material down on it, and it will get it down to bare pavement so it’s a safe driving surface,” said Bohaty.

Doug Kersten has been a county plow driver for over 20 years.

He says he can’t remember a winter with so much snow.

“Well, we have worked pretty much every day here the last month or so… Yeah, I don’t remember working this many days in a row in quite a while,” said Kersten.

18 large plow trucks and 12 smaller pickup plows were hard at work in the county.

In addition, all 25 of the county’s motor graters were helping to break up the ice.

Bohaty hopes the cement roads will be cleared by Wednesday afternoon.

After that they will prep for yet another snow storm, set to be here on Friday.

“The salt and sand mixture that we just replenished to a safe level is kind of getting to the point again, where if we have two more snow events like this, we would probably be in trouble. We are hoping we can hold out and make it through the end of the year with what we have now,” said Bohaty.