Tommy Washbush
A snow plow drives by on University Ave on January 22, 2024.
With warmer temperatures this week, the city is hoping to clear streets before the next round of bad weather.
Madison drivers have been muttering to themselves and complaining to the streets department in all-caps since the city decided to stop salting and leave a hard pack of snow across the city after last week’s snowstorm. City officials in part blamed an extended cold snap for the conditions, saying road salt is chemically ineffective when the temperature dips below 15 degrees.
State climatologist Steve Vavrus says Madison residents might have to get used to it — he expects more bouts of extreme cold to hit the city even as the average winter temperature warms, both impacts of climate change.
“There is a lot of research being done if climate change will cause more of these cold air outbreaks. It’s the enhanced warming of the arctic that may induce those changes,” he says. The changing climate causes less stable arctic air patterns, making frigid air more likely to descend to lower latitudes.
Vavrus adds that cold snaps often follow snowstorms: In the winter of 2018-19, extreme cold after a storm also left Madison roads covered in slippery snow pack, although for a shorter time.
“Oftentimes what follows snowstorms is arctic air behind it,” he says. “Typically we have a low pressure system tracking to our south that draws in northerly and northwesterly air. So it’s a pretty common sequence.”
Madison might also see other extreme conditions due to climate change. Vavrus says that the wintry mix of snow, rain and freezing rain expected this week could also become more common as average winter temperatures rise toward the melting point.
“One concern I have is whether we’ll be transitioning not just to more rain, but more ice and more freezing rain. Our climate will start to resemble that of northern and central Illinois, and those areas are more prone to ice storms in the winter than Madison,” says Vavrus.
Madison’s last major ice storm, in 1976, caused many in the city to lose power; then-Mayor Paul Soglin declared an emergency and asked residents to restrict water and telephone usage across the city after damage to infrastructure.
Madison Streets Division spokesman Bryan Johnson tells Isthmus he knows the tough road conditions of the past week have been wearing on residents’ nerves. “We didn’t really have any kind of winter to speak of, then we had it all at once. We had every sort of flavor of winter at one time.”
Johnson says the decision not to continue salting as temperatures dropped and snowfall remained heavy was a considered one. “There’s thought that went into this. We’re not trying to make excuses,” he says.
In a Jan. 18 email to alders and staff, streets superintendent Charlie Romines said putting down another round of salt near the end of the storm risked “at least a 50-50” chance of creating ice on the roads if melting snow re-froze. “Your options in a storm like the one late last week are to salt and keep salting and do it fast enough, at a rate high enough, repeatedly and in quick succession enough, to hold off ice formation (Dane County Highways - DOT) or to shut it down before ice starts forming (City of Madison),” wrote Romines.
“We are not set up to chase the plunging temps down the rabbit hole with salt, even if we set environmental values aside. We do not have the capabilities to do what Dane County Highways did to keep the beltline, interstate and surface highway roads they maintain to bare pavement in an event like this. To be clear, a couple more employees, a little bigger OT budget, a hundred grand more for salt, a few more plow trucks, etc., would not have changed the outcome for this event.”
Romines said that achieving a different outcome on Madison’s roads after such a major storm followed by a cold snap would require “significant changes” to the streets department’s structure, resources, and policies. “I do believe our current policies and service levels strike a reasonable balance of providing safe winter driving conditions as well as environmental and fiscal responsibility,” wrote Romines.
He said he is researching some options for future “‘break glass in case of emergency’ scenarios” as long as they aren’t “a complete budget buster.”
This week, the city is hopeful it can plow snow pack off of streets before rain, and potentially freezing rain, starts to fall. Johnson says he expects more complaints from residents as heavy, wet snow is plowed into residents’ driveway aprons and crosswalk ramps. He says residents should shovel that snow “a bite at a time,” drink water, and take breaks. “It’s an act of physics, it’s not a deliberate act by streets,” says Johnson. “Anytime they pass a gap on the curb line, it’s gonna slide off the plow and fill those driveway aprons.”
Depending on the forecast, Johnson is hoping for much better road conditions later this week. Recounting the many Madisonians irate with conditions after the recent storm, he jokes, “By Thursday, the only complaint I want to hear is that we didn’t pick up their Christmas tree.”
