Frustration persisted early this week for motorists maneuvering the slippery grooves and mounds on Bismarck-Mandan roads. Many streets were rock solid and ridged with ice.

Many drivers said street clean-up should have started earlier.

"It's true that the wind here causes snow to blow over into the roads, but that doesn't mean you wait until the snow accumulates and the wind dies down to plow it," Michael Philleo said.

"I saw one driver literally trapped on an icy street because they couldn't move any further," he added. "They weren't stuck in a ditch but had actually slid against the curb and were unable to move. I pulled my truck over to help them and found out I had become stuck on the icy road as well." Philleo said he had to be pushed out by another vehicle.

City officials kept a wary eye on weather forecasts on Tuesday that called for a wintery mix of rain and snow. These could compound their clean-up challenges.

"We're hoping not to get a lot of rain. It will make it slippery again," said Jeff Heintz, director of public service operations for Bismarck. He said sanding would continue.

"We're cutting as much ice as we can," Heintz said. "They were talking about it getting into the 40s. With that, we could cut a lot of ice."

Heintz said some workers even volunteered to work the holiday to cut more ice.

He said most of the plowing was done, but crews need to do a lot of hauling along busy thoroughfares such as Main Avenue and Century Avenue.

Heintz said the blizzard posed unique challenges.

"We used snow gates the whole event, except for non-residential areas and areas without driveways," Heintz said.

"We started with the emergency routes and then went to the major arterials of the city."

In fact, plows had opened an emergency route and even groomed the trail for an ambulance en route to a snowbound victim, according to Heintz.

"We usually have a dry snow, but with this, the ground was not frozen. It was warm and the pavement was wet. The rain came. Once the snow started to fall on that, it absorbed the rain and that was slushy," Heintz said. "When the 9.1 inches of heavy, wet snow came, it insulated it."

Heintz said when the heavy, wet snow was removed, the slush was still beneath it, making it difficult for all motorists, including the recovery road trucks.

He added that slush froze making, hard, rough ice after the storm. Motorists found it difficult to get traction, including the the clean-up crews' equipment.

"We haven't seen a weather event like this for 11 or 12 years," Heintz said.

Heintz said the city is divided into seven plowing units. Each has a motor gate snowplow, a front end snowplow and a sanding unit.

"We started plowing around 12:01 a.m. on Friday.

"There are 300 miles of streets in Bismarck to cover," he said. "You cannot plow it at one time. With three passes of plowing, that makes it about 1,000 miles of streets to plow here," he said.

He said snow gates were used all over town, but the type of snow seen in last week's storm impacted their effectiveness. "The snow was wet and sticky and stuck onto the plow. … With the gates down, and no place to put the snow, it was rolling out in front of it," Heintz said.

He added that the ice along the curb lines is not set up to drain off well when temperatures do rise.

Heintz said Friday's school closures helped the process because crews did not have to navigate through as much traffic or people dropping off children.

Heintz said there was little risk of depleting the city's 640 tons of sand-salt mixture unless there are many repeat weather events like it experienced last week. He said supplies also were left from last winter.

Both Bismarck and Mandan pulled certified large equipment operators from other departments. Bismarck ran double shifts of clean-up through Sunday night. "We're pulling them from the landfill, forests and water departments," Heintz said. "We got everybody we could."

"It's gone rather well. We're about 85 percent done as far as the first round went," said Henry Hurst, street superintendent for the city of Mandan.

"We're now hauling from the main arterials and emergency routes. With the ice layers, it's been hard to push around," Hurst said.

Todd Hamilton, meteorologist for the Bismarck office of the National Weather Service, said today posed the biggest threat of a rain and snow mix. He didn't think the total accumulation would be high. Sprinkles and flurries were forecast for Thursday. It was expected to be cold and windy Friday.

(Reach reporter LeAnn Eckroth at 250-8264 or leann.eckroth@bismarcktribune.com.)