December 1, 2006: An unusually large winter storm . . .
One the things I was looking forward to when I moved to Columbia, Missouri in 2003 was the fact that Columbia usually received less than half of the annual snowfall as that of Altoona. This turned out to be true, which was great. But that doesn't mean something out of the ordinary wasn't possible on occasion.
In Altoona, 15 inches of snow is a lot, but definitely not unusual. The fleet of city and township plow trucks would be out pre-treating the roadways before the snow started. After the snow started accumulating, the plow trucks would run all night long keeping the roads clear. I quickly discovered that Columbia, with it's annual snowfall being nowhere near that of Altoona, didn't have a fleet of plow trucks. The small number of plow trucks that were available spent their time keeping the main roads clear. This meant that the secondary and neighborhood roads were out of luck.