After dealing with issues with its old snow map last winter, Overland Park has rolled out a new interactive map online to help residents better track the status of city streets and whether they’ve been plowed.
Called the Snow Operations Map, it is intended to be “more accurate and timely,” according to a city news release.
Meg Ralph, strategic communications director for the city, said the new map can differentiate more effectively and accurately which areas have already been cleared, which are currently being cleared and which are still pending.
The new map could get its first test on Monday. The National Weather Service is predicting 1 to 3 inches of snow around the Kansas City region, and a winter weather advisory is in effect from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday.
How does the new snow map work?
The new map (which you can find here) allows residents to zero in on their neighborhood by typing in their address. They can also look at a citywide map.
The new map features a sidebar and ticker that will be updated throughout a snow event with information, including plow crew shift changes and updates to when plows are approaching.
The map will be active at all times during a snow event, so residents can watch everything, from trucks pretreating streets early in a storm to plows clearing streets.
Another feature will allow residents to see how recently a street was plowed and “the status of routes overall,” Ralph said in an email.
There are two options users can toggle between when looking at the map: a time option and a route status option.
On the “time” version of the map, unplowed streets will be shown as white, while cleared streets will be green. Streets will become red to show that it’s been a while since a street has been plowed.
On the “route status” option, you can see streets go from gray to blue as plows progress through their routes. Then, they’ll turn green when a route is complete. However, a green street might not mean a street is totally clear, just that the route has been completed once, Ralph said.
The map runs off of data that comes from GPS transponders on each truck the city uses in its snow plowing operations.
There’s also a verification process. When a driver is done with an area, they will inform city dispatchers, who will then verify that the corresponding streets are shown as plowed on the map.
New map a response to snow troubles last winter
Issues with Overland Park’s old snow map became apparent during winter storms in January, when several inches of snow accumulated over multiple days of wintry weather. The old map was not able to keep up with that.
At times, because it required manual updates and used automated data, the old map showed streets that were actually unplowed as being cleared.
According to records obtained by the Post, Overland Park received thousands of submissions to its online OP Cares customer service system related to snow-clearing issues last winter, including resident complaints about unplowed streets and confusion about the old snow map.
“You may recall that we discovered some challenges with our old snow map during the long winter storm in late January last year,” Ralph said. “We found that during multi-day snow events, the map wasn’t accurately displaying street status and plow operations.”
Remember: Weather conditions impact snow clearing
One thing to keep in mind is that beyond the snow on the roads, other weather conditions might impact how well a road is cleared during and after a snowstorm, Ralph said.
Last winter, subzero temperatures impacted the effectiveness of pretreating roads before snow began falling. Multiple days of snow close together also impact how quickly streets get cleared. Low temperatures in January also resulted in snow freezing to the pavement, making it difficult to plow some streets.
“If temperatures are hovering around zero and all the precipitation is frozen solid to the pavement, a street considered ‘cleared’ may look different than when the weather is in the 20s and 30s, when we can clear the street to bare pavement,” Ralph said.
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