For winter road crews, snow is a matter of time and effort as they work 12-hour shifts plowing.
But ice on bitter-cold days, like those this week that closed schools, frustrated drivers and are factors in many accidents - it’s a more hopeless battle.
At a time of year when they once were plowing snow and salting roadways, maintenance workers were instead continuing to grade gravel roads, in an attempt to keep them more smooth in anticipation of the first hard frost that gets into the ground.