In his 15 years of plowing or, more recently, overseeing the plowing of city roads, Gordon Smith had never seen as much snowfall at one time as he had last weekend.

"This was a shocker because we got all the snow at once,” he said in an interview Thursday afternoon, driving through the streets of Copper Ridge and discussing how the city deals with the winter precipitation on the roads.

With a foot of snow falling over the course of just a few days, it presented a new challenge for city crews tasked with removing the white stuff from the streets as quickly as possible.

"That's the biggest snowfall I've seen at once,” Smith said.

Driving up Hamilton Boulevard from the downtown towards Copper Ridge, Smith outlined the priorities for the crews.

The first priorities are the major arterial roads – Hamilton Boulevard, Robert Service Way, Two Mile Hill and so on. That's followed by second priority sites being the major neighbourhood roads as well as major community buildings like the Canada Games Centre and Takhini Arena due to the large numbers of people who use those buildings.

"All our priority ones and twos are done,” Smith said as he continued heading up a relatively clear section of Hamilton Boulevard with large windrows of snow piled on the side.

Wide roadways like Hamilton Boulevard mean graders must run along the same section of road up to five times to make sure the snow gets to the side. Using the median to store the excess snow isn't an option because of the damage it would cause landscaping that sits underneath the fallen snow, he explained.

With a budget totalling $2.2 million for 2010 (and still under budget), a total of 28 full-time and 10 casual staff work 10 hour shifts, the machines going 24 hours a day to get the snow removal done. When there's no snow to remove, the full-time staff work on other city jobs, acting director of operations Mike Gau said this morning.

In 2009, crews were kept extremely busy with a lot of snow falling that year. The city ended up spending $2.65 million that year, which meant less money was available for summer road work.

This year, given the low snow fall from January onward to spring and the late fall, city staff are expecting to spend between $200,000 and $300,000 less than what they expected.

The road maintenance staff are divided into six crews who work shifts that may be days, nights and through the week or on weekends.

They operate the city's four graders, five dump trucks with plows (two of which also serve as sanders), three loaders and four Bobcats (used to clear public sidewalks, bus stops, around intersections and the like).

"It all takes time to do,” he said, driving through Copper Ridge where a Bobcat was out clearing a bus stop.

When Smith moved to Whitehorse in 1988, the city was much smaller, with Granger being the newest section of town. Each year, it seems newer roads into newer subdivisions are created, meaning it can take even longer to plow city streets.

Ingram, for example, is among those newer neighbourhoods the city will need to plow with narrower roads that can make it difficult to find a spot to place the plowed snow.

Driving through the main road in the new, largely undeveloped neighbourhood next to Arkell, Smith pointed out the city had to only plow the main road because there is only one housing development there so far. Next year, that's expected to change.

The new section of Takhini North is another area to be added to the city's list of streets to be plowed.

The move to put in roundabouts at city intersections also means a longer time to plow than a typical four-way intersection would.

And though the city has bought an additional grader and a loader over the last few years to deal with the extra work, it still takes time to remove the snow from all the city streets.

Bigger city buildings like the Canada Games Centre and, next month, the new Public Safety Building, also take more time to plow.

"That's going to be a big job too,” Smith said of the new building at the top of Two Mile Hill which will house both the bylaw and fire departments.

Last weekend's huge snowfall became even more of a challenge when it warmed up early this week. That turned what would normally become hard-packed snow on priority 3 roads to mushier, soft snow, a challenge for many to drive on.

In a normal season, Smith said, priority 3 roads usually become more hard-packed and are easier to drive on, with the city removing the snow just once or twice a season, and normally much later in the season.

This week, however, crews found themselves heading into neighbourhoods to plow the priority 3 roads that would not normally get attention until later in the season.

Piled at the end of a number of cul-de-sacs through Copper Ridge was snow taken up by city equipment and waiting for a loader to take it to one of the city snow dumps.

Along the roadways, it's easy to see where residents have pushed snow from their driveways out into the road, creating more challenges for city plows.

In other areas, Smith points to windrows of snow that people have driven over. That makes it more difficult to shovel, he pointed out.

With the exception of the 100 or so seniors and those with disabilities meeting eligibility requirements, residents are responsible for shovelling the windrow the city leaves in front of their property.

In areas where there are only residential properties on one side of the street, the city will plow the snow to the other side to avoid putting a windrow in front of people's homes.

If the city could figure out a way to plow without putting the windrows in front of homes, it would, he emphasized.

The city does its best to get to the homes of seniors and those with disabilities to deal with the windrows as quickly as it can, he said.

"We get to it, but we can't always get to it right away,” he said.

And just like all city residents, the city crews are also forced to deal with shovelling their own driveways and waiting for the plows to clear their roads.

The crews focus on the city's priorities and by the time they get to priority 3 roads, there's no set neighbourhood they go to first. Rather, the crews divide up the neighbourhoods to be cleared that day – one crew heading to Porter Creek, another to Riverdale or Copper Ridge and so on until they are done.

And while the residential neighbourhoods are the focus through the daytime hours when many residents have gone to work, the downtown becomes the focus overnight when many of those same residents are now home and the downtown core has cleared out from its busier daytime hours.

"By tomorrow, all the side streets will be plowed,” Smith said as he drove down Fourth Avenue, glancing at many of the side roads yet to be plowed.

As he later turned down Second Avenue though, he noticed snow had once again filled in some of the parking spots, leaving city crews with yet another job for the coming days.

"It's a process to get it all,” he said. Along with all the roadways most residents travel in a given day inside the city's core, he added, there are also the roads to pumphouses that must be plowed and those streets in country residential subdivisions like Wolf Creek.

And that process has no doubt gotten underway once again today, with fluffy snowflakes dancing above the city streets.