The problem is all kinds of logistics come into play not the least of which is snow plows are designed to move snow to the side. But, when you get that much snow down inside man made canyons (Streets between buildings and houses) you can only move so much snow to the side. Then of course you have to move snow "out" and that requires waaay more man power and worse you got to have someplace to dump it.
Then there is the added problem of cars left behind in those streets some of which no doubt got covered up by snow plows. In the Blizzard of 77-78 here in southern Ohio in our small town of 6000 people we had 20 plus cars totaled when the the National Guard brought in Bulldozers to dig our town out (We were literally cut off for several days because the snow obliterated all the roads in and out of our valley.) The snow removal took several days with most of the time spent Hauling the snow to deserted areas to dump it.
IT happened again to our town circa 1996 but this time the Mayor was a little more savy and early on had our own city workers moving snow out of the streets (They would push it to the intersections and front-end loaders and dump trucks were used to dump the snow in the outlying areas.) The National Guard still had to clear our passes to the highways but it was cleared in less than a day.
The Problem now up there in Oregon is I am sure they are too far behind the curve to move that much snow (I Imagine they would spend days now just getting a path to move snow away from the population centers.) You need many many bulldozers and trucks to get ahead of that curve now.
They are gonna need National Guard and Reserves and possibly active duty Military units to achieve that much snow removal.
I hope they get help soon!
We had a blizzard here in CT in 78 too and it took the National Guard and huge payloaders to clear us out. We were stuck for 4 days, BUT we didn’t have more snowfall right behind the blizzard.
When my brother lived in upstate NY, he said they had to do that weekly. Load up the dump trucks with the payloaders and toss it all in the finger lakes.
These people are in for a tough haul.
Yes, agreed - it will take much help from the military asap to make any inroads in this situation - which appears to be a real disaster in the making right now.
Surely, we as a country can get these emergency actions going!
That said, I was amazed by what I saw in Michigan back in the early ‘90’s. We went there to ski Indianhead Mountain and the roads were canyons with 20 foot walls. Unbelievable!
I never could figure out how they piled snow up that high.