Aurora’s plow fleet readies for piles of powder this winter

AURORA | City officials have released the 2015-16 snow removal plan ahead of what could be a productive season for snowfall across Aurora.

The plan prioritizes 1,325 lane-miles of snow routes for plowing according to priority order across Aurora. The city has about 729 miles of designated priority 1, “red routes” that are plowed first because they are essential for the city’s public safety emergency system.

“Priority 2” streets include streets that provide access to schools, nursing homes, city recreation centers and neighborhoods, according to the plan.

Residential streets are not plowed except under extreme winter conditions, said Chris Carnahan, public works operations manager for Aurora.

“Not all of the streets in Aurora are snow routes,” he said. “If you live on a regular residential street, it’s not normally plowed. We try to have a designated snow route within about two blocks of every house,”

He said the city has 40 trucks in the public works department that can be equipped with plows for snow removal. That’s in addition to a stock of 8,000 tons of granular de-icer and 200,000 gallons of liquid de-icer. 

“If we get into bigger storms, our Parks and Water departments can put plows on trucks, too,” he said. “We can get up to 62 or 63 (trucks) out on the road if we need to in bigger storms.”

Carnahan said that during a typical Aurora winter the city only deploys 35 to 40 trucks. Over a 61-year history of snow fall, the average snowfall in Aurora is 62 inches per year.

Carnahan said the city has not planned for additional snow with a strong El Niño forecasted. 

“We’ve looked at prior years where we had strong El Niños. Those were not necessarily the years we had our biggest snows,” he said.

Carnahan said El Niño weather patterns do not significantly affect snowfall amounts in Aurora. The average strong El Niño yearly snow total in the city for the past 61 years was 71.6 inches, according to Carnahan. He said residents could expect somewhere between 62 and 70 inches of snow this season. 

“It’s a little bit higher than our normal in Aurora, which is about 63 inches,” Carnahan said.  He said that El Niños typically bring the city about 10 more inches of snow than during an average year.

Forecasters say this winter El Niño will leave a big wet — but not necessarily snowy — footprint on much of the United States, including parched California. That’s because there is an equal chance for it to be warmer or colder than typical.

Forecasters see a milder, warmer winter north of the Mason-Dixon line and for all of California and Nevada.

Carnahan said with the potential for a warmer winter, snow this year could be easier to plow than last year, when the state experienced an arctic airmass. That weather event caused temperatures to dip into the double digits and also produced moderate to heavy snow, putting the city on numerous cold weather alerts.

“It was just so cold, the de-icers didn’t want to work,” he said. Last year, the city also saw  more snow than usual at 70 inches, according to Carnahan.

In October the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration issued its winter forecast, heavily influenced by one of the strongest El Niños  on record.

NOAA expects a cooler and wetter winter for the South. California is forecast to get more than the usual precipitation during the critical time its reservoirs usually fill, but there’s no guarantee. Only northern tier states, the Ohio Valley states and Alaska should be dry.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.