Snow scramble

MOSES LAKE — Two weekend snowstorms and a touch of freezing rain scrambled morning commutes and canceled school throughout the Columbia Basin Monday.

Classes were canceled Monday in Moses Lake, Ephrata, Quincy, Othello, Warden, Soap Lake and Wilson Creek. That was the result of Saturday and Sunday snowstorms followed by a short burst of freezing rain, enough to add a crust of ice to all surfaces.

Moses Lake city workers concentrated on major streets, hills, and the most popular routes around town (called arterials), beginning early Sunday morning and continuing into Monday. Typically the city doesn’t plow residential streets, public works director Mike Moro said. “It just takes a lot of money” to maintain the number of vehicles and hire the staff that would be required. In most years the city doesn’t get enough snow to justify the cost, he said.

But 2001 is “one of those years when we get it (a substantial snowstorm),” and in those years the city hires an outside contractor to plow residential streets. The contractor estimated all residential streets would be plowed by about noon Thursday, he said – and that’s with plowing going on around the clock. Moro estimated the city has about 110 miles of streets.

The city doesn’t take requests to plow some streets earlier than others, he said.

Residents are asked to move cars off the streets until after the street is plowed, to make it easier for them to work, Moro said.

The snow is expected to stop, at least for a while. Unfortunately it’s going to get cold again.

And for a couple of days it will be pretty cold. It will not, however, be quite as cold as it was last week, said Bryce Williams, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane.

It’s all due to a change in weather patterns, with winds shifting to the north. It’s going to be cold, but “nothing like we saw last week,”

Temperatures are projected to bottom out at about 3 degrees below zero on Wednesday and zero on Thursday, according to the NWS website. Highs are forecast for 20 degrees Wednesday and 14 degrees Thursday. The cold weather is forecast to stick around through Friday, with temperatures dropping to 3 degrees Friday night. Winds are forecast between five and 15 miles per hour, which could drop wind chill values to 10 below.

“We’ve got a few more systems moving through,” Williams said, with the prevailing weather track coming up from the southwest. The forecast includes a chance of snow Saturday and Sunday – but it’s supposed to warm up, and the precipitation may fall as rain, he said.