Days after Mother Nature dumped roughly two feet of snow on Pittsburgh, many main and residential roads remain snow-covered, making everything from a morning commute to a walk to the mailbox a slushy, icy adventure.

But in cities where massive snowfall isn't as rare, snow removal has been boiled down to a science involving lots of preparation, persistence and teamwork.

For the department of public works for Erie County, an area of western New York that can get as much as 90 inches of snow each year, winter planning typically begins in late spring or early summer.

"We started filling barns with salt in April last year," said Gerard J. Sentz, the county's public works commissioner.

When a storm is in the forecast, Mr. Sentz doesn't always wait for snow to hit the ground before treating some of the county's 1,200 lane miles of roads.

"We will pre-treat the roads with salt before the storm is expected to hit," Mr. Sentz said. The initial layer of salt helps melt the snow as soon as it coats the roads and makes it easier to plow, he said.

Former Pittsburgh public works director Guy Costa said that during his 10-year tenure, pre-treating roads proved ineffective.

"We pre-treated streets with laying rock salt down," Mr. Costa said. "The rock salt would hit the roadways and bounce into the curb lanes."

Pre-treating should take place within an hour or two before snowfall to help prevent drivers and pedestrians from tracking the salt away, said Bill Gray, superintendent of public works for Ithaca, N.Y.

The department of public works for Buffalo, N.Y, which averages 89 inches of snow annually, prepares for winter by tapping a number of outside contractors that can be called in if needed to help public works crews with the "push phase," or the plowing process.

"If we needed to, we could bring in a couple hundred people or as few as 20 people, based on what we need at [the] time," said Buffalo's commissioner of public works, Steven Stepniak.

When it comes to actually plowing the snow, many say working around the clock is key.

"If you pull off [the roads] and [the snow] gets away from you, it's hard to get back" on track, said Al Weigel, public works director for Fargo, N.D.

To clear Fargo's roughly 130 miles of sidewalks and bike trails and 350 lane miles of roads, the public works department calls in enough crew members to man 33 pieces of equipment at all hours. Once the roads are cleared for the first time, they are repeatedly plowed and salted to prevent slush and ice from building up, Mr. Weigel said.

Buffalo also employs an around-the-clock approach to plowing but realizes sometimes cities run out of room on the streets to pile all the snow up.

"When you get a major snow storm, there's nowhere to put the snow," Mr. Costa said about Pittsburgh.

"We do haul on occasion," Mr. Stepniak said, such as in 2002 when three lake effect storms dumped eight feet of snow on Buffalo within 24 hours. Hauling involves moving dunes of snow from the side of streets to vacant city properties.

Fargo and Ithaca also free up space on streets and sidewalks by hauling snow to empty city properties and parks.

Regardless of their cleanup routines, these cities and counties share a common goal - getting commuters back onto streets as soon as possible, usually within 24 to 48 hours of the snowfall.

"The public has come accustomed to being able to get back to work the following day," Mr. Weigel said. But, as Pittsburgh has learned, a number of factors can make cleanup messy.

"Temperature is always your best friend in these events," Mr. Stepniak said. The more the temperature dips below freezing, the less effective salt becomes in melting snow and ice, he said. Sometimes cities turn to a mixture of sand and salt as an alternative, but many refrain from using only sand since the grit can clog up sewer systems.

Another challenge Pittsburgh has faced is that clearing snow from city streets is different than plowing residential roads that can be more narrow and have more hills. Ithaca's public works department uses larger trucks to clear the flat portions of the city and smaller pickup trucks to address residential roads.

Pittsburgh has explored putting plows on trash trucks, Mr. Costa said, but found that the added length made them too large to navigate narrow neighborhood streets.

Cars lodged in off-street parking spaces around cities also can impede plowing. Ithaca and Buffalo handle this issue by clearing one side of the street, giving cars time to move and then clearing the alternate side of the block.

No matter how much planning and experience a public works department has with significant snowfall, each storm presents its own challenges since no two storms are alike, Mr. Gray said.

But Mr. Stepniak said there is only one sure solution.

"The best snow removal system is called spring."

First Published: February 9, 2010, 5:00 a.m.