Following two heavy storms in early December, the Rochelle street department has seen a lighter winter in the months that have followed, Public Works Director Tim Isley said Feb. 25.

A total of 15 inches of snow fell between those two winter weather events in early December. The street department has responded to 14 total snow events this year where it has gone out to salt and/or plow, Isley said. Since those two December events, about 7 inches of snow has fallen total in Rochelle, with each event ranging from a half inch to 2 inches.

“Cleanup for those lesser events can be just as difficult as cleaning up a bigger storm, depending on factors such as time of day, temperature, wind speed and pavement temperatures,” Isley said. “Overall, this has been a winter that public works likes because we’re able to do other things. I would say compared to the winters we’ve had lately, it’s been kind of average. We’ve had several winters lately with a couple big storms and the rest of the events are one or 2 inches here or there. It seems normal with the trend we’ve been in.”

Isley said his department sees “considerable” savings on salt expenses during lighter winters. Road salt currently costs about $84 per ton. The past two winters, the city has used under 1,000 tons of salt, which Isley said is a good number. About 500 tons of salt were used during the two large December storms.

Winter overtime expenses for snowfall events typically remain steady for the street department yearly due to the work usually needing to be done outside of operators’ regular hours, Isley said. Ten of the 14 weather events this year have taken place on weekends and operators usually have around 100 hours of overtime per year, Isley said.

Seeing milder winters also keeps wear and tear off street department vehicles and equipment used for snow removal and salting, Isley said. The city has been working to get its trucks on a 16-year replacement rotation.

“Plowing snow is very hard on equipment and salt corrodes it very quickly,” Isley said. “Every time we have a snowfall event, we spend time in the shop afterwards washing trucks. There’s always something to fix. Plows break or get damaged. I think snow removal equipment lasts a little longer these days with the lighter winters we’ve seen. The lighter the winter, the better it is for our equipment.”

Non-winter weather event work for the street department this year has included clearing about 4,500 feet of drainage ditch, clearing land around a city-owned detention pond, and over 5,000 feet of roadway patching and crack sealing, mostly on the deteriorating portion of Illinois Route 251 on the north side of Rochelle as the city awaits the state’s full reconstruction and widening of the road in coming years.

“Having time to work on other tasks in the winters is huge,” Isley said. “It helps us a lot. When the weather does break and it turns nicer we can get right to things that we’re only able to do in warmer weather. We have over 4,000 trees that we maintain in the city. We were able to get crack filling done on Illinois Route 251, which is something a more serious winter would not have allowed us to do.”

The Rochelle street department recently expanded its staffing and hired two new full-time operators, which Isley said has been successful in accomplishing the department’s multitude of tasks more quickly, including snow removal.

“We’re in a much better spot now,” Isley said. “Having two more people in the winter helps us to get through snow plowing routes a lot quicker. It used to take us six hours to plow the city entirely. We can now do that in about four hours. That includes the airport runways and 16 parking lots. Expanded staffing has been very helpful.”