Barely 3 1/2 days after the vernal equinox signaled the official arrival of spring, the season’s first snowfall had snowplows and salt spreaders back at work across Naperville Monday morning.
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The snow that was forecast to continue until mid-day Monday had crews out before dawn. An internal city memo sent at 7:15 a.m. reported that work had been under way since the flakes began to fly around 3 a.m. Two dozen trucks were at work in the dark, plowing and spreading salt on the main roadways and arterial streets, and were headed for residential areas at that point, city spokeswoman Linda LaCloche said.
Naperville Police Department spokesman Sgt. Steve Schindlbeck said responders hadn’t been much busier than usual as of 10:25 a.m.
“Just a spike in accidents,” none of which yielded serious injuries, he said. “By tomorrow it’ll be gone.”
The National Weather Service was predicting up to four inches of accumulation Monday, which would fall far short of the official record for Chicago on March 23. Seven inches of snowfall was reported on that date in 1897, according to the NWS. That was well below the record for the final week of March, which stands at 13.6 inches, reported on March 25, 1930.
The city’s interactive snowplowing map, which shows where the crews are at work, can be found at gis.naperville.il.us/mashups/snowroutes.
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