Plow crews struggle to keep up in Anchorage after a succession of snowstorms

For the past few days, Anchorage drivers and pedestrians have been contending with ice and snowy mush on streets and sidewalks, and watching as mounds of snow pile up in their neighborhood cul-de-sacs.

State and city transportation officials in charge of clearing Anchorage roads say they’re racing to clean up the mess. But Paul VanLandingham, the municipality’s street maintenance manager, said complaints from the public are mounting — and understandably so. The snowfalls generally haven’t been large, but they become a problem when they come in quick succession as they have in recent weeks, he said.

“They might just be 2 to 3 inches, but they add up,” he said.

The snow, mixed with drizzle, has sent cars sliding through roadway slush and car-rattling stretches of rutted ice. Snow berms have piled up along many roads, making it difficult for drivers to access parking lots and driveways. Uncleared sidewalks have forced pedestrians onto major streets.

Following warmer temperatures Wednesday afternoon, many streets had filled with pools of slop here and glazed swaths of ice there, keeping drivers on their toes.

This week through Tuesday, the Anchorage Police Department had recorded an average of 37 daily crashes, according to figures from the department. That compares to nine at the same time a year ago.

Frustrated residents are taking to social media to voice their concerns. In a tweet to the Daily News, one person said neighbors carpooled into work Tuesday morning because of the bad roads. A different person said on the East side of the city, it “looks more like extra long ice skating rinks than roads.” A Twitter user also reported they saw someone using a snowmachine on a neighborhood street in Government Hill, north of downtown.

Some residents on social media have postulated that budget shortfalls or staffing issues are causing issues. That’s not the case, transportation officials said.

The city’s road plowing budget is healthy, though it has increasingly paid overtime to work crews, VanLandingham said. COVID-19 has kept some heavy equipment operators at home, but it’s only been a “minor inconvenience,” he said.

Instead, the major issue are the repeat snowfalls, he said. When one snowfall arrives on the heels of another, road plowers have to abandon their work on smaller roads and move to busier roads that are top priorities.

“These last three weeks, we’ve had seven or eight different snow events, and then mixed with heavy rain, it takes a bit to get everything dug out,” VanLandingham said. “We can catch up if we can catch a break in the next couple of days.”

Late Tuesday, graders had started to venture into neighborhoods to start clearing roads there, VanLandingham said. But a fresh round of snow and drizzle early Wednesday forced his crews to leave those residential areas and head back to the major roads the city clears, such as 36th Avenue or Arctic Boulevard.

“The residential areas right now are suffering,” he said. “Hopefully by tonight we will plow those residential areas again.”

The city and the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities are responsible for plowing and grading different roads. The state plows the Seward and Glenn highways, and other major roads, including most of A and C streets and much of Northern Lights Boulevard. The city handles the other roads.

When repeat snowfalls occur, the state often has pull its plows off the lower priority roads it plows, such as Huffman, DeArmoun, and Rabbit Creek, to focus on top priorities like the highways, said Shannon McCarthy, a spokeswoman with the state transportation department.

“Sometimes we can’t get through all our inventory when the next 3 inches starts to fall,” she said.

She said the state transportation department has not been receiving an unusual number of complaints this year, in part because the snowfalls generally haven’t been large. Complaints grow with bigger snowfalls, say 7 inches or more, because travel on roads becomes even more difficult, she said.

She said regular snowfalls can cause other complications too, making it more difficult to swiftly get on top of road grading or hauling away snow, she said.

Manpower hasn’t been an issue for the state, and the state hasn’t paid an unusual amount of overtime this year, she said. About seven or eight state operators are running heavy equipment for each shift, though they can double up as they did Wednesday as rain and snow fell, she said.

For the Municipality of Anchorage’s part, VanLandingham said he had about 50 operators, close to two-thirds of the workforce, out clearing roads and sidewalks on Wednesday afternoon.

“I’ve got a number of crews going on three weeks with basically one day off, maybe, here and there,” he said.

Right now, the No. 1 complaint to the municipal road department are giant piles of snow in cul-de-sacs.

“It’s getting pretty tight for people to maneuver around them, and they’re starting to worry about getting emergency vehicles in,” he said.

The city will soon start clearing the cul-de-sac piles, and is working with the Anchorage Fire Department to prioritize streets with the biggest problem piles, he said.

The trend of small snowfalls with some rain is expected to continue in Anchorage at least through the weekend, said Tim Markle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The service is calling for three inches of snow on Thursday, thanks to warm, moist air from the northern Pacific Ocean.

“It’s nothing unusual, but we are stuck in this pattern and have been for a while,” Markle said.