The Head of Public Works for Steinbach admits this week's snow clearing effort has been one of the most challenging in recent memory.

Randy Reimer says a 15 centimetre snowfall should take about three days for a city-wide cleanup. It has now been three days and Reimer says there is still a lot of work left to be done.

Reimer explains it was wet and heavy snow that fell Sunday night. Then, when the temperature started dropping, the moist snow froze really hard. He notes because their plows were not able to get everything cleared on Monday and Tuesday, the snow has really bonded to the streets.

"Our graders right now are having a really tough time trying to cut this ice off," says Reimer. "It just slows everything down considerably."

Snow clearing crews were targeting the residential areas west of Highway 12 Thursday morning. Reimer says from there they will shift their attention to Southland Estates and then the Georgetown area. Following that they will still have Clearspring Greens, the Deerfield area and a number of streets in the inner core, south of Main Street to clear.

"By (Friday) evening we still won't have all streets plowed," suggests Reimer.

And not like the snow packed streets isn't enough of a challenge, Reimer says a lot of people are parking their vehicles on the street even before they have been cleared. As a result, the city is issuing tickets and in some cases moving the vehicles. He asks motorists to please refrain from parking on streets until they have been cleared.

Meanwhile, Reimer says once all this snow starts melting, he's not concerned that there will be the same issues along Hespeler Street and McKenzie Avenue as last spring. You may recall the slushy mess that resulted from flooded streets combined with colder weather. He notes the winter and spring months were an exception last year with all of the freeze/ thaw cycles.