By JASON SCHOONOVER and AMANDA LILLIE

With a white Christmas guaranteed, Mower County residents are hoping to see more black — as in bare pavement.

“We’re out doing the best we can on the snow, and there’s a lot of it,” said County Engineer Mike Hanson.

However, Hanson said it’s going to be difficult to get a lot of roads plowed down to completely clear pavement.

“If the public expects black, we’re not necessarily going to get it,” Hanson said.

Snowplow drivers have been working 12 hour shifts, and they’ll be out again Wednesday. Hanson said the employees are doing the best they can with limited budgets.

County plows don’t apply chemical as state plows do, often dropping an ice-melting mixture from both sides of their plows.

“We’re not out wasting material,” Hanson said. “We cannot afford to do that.”

Assistant City Engineer Steven Lang said Austin plow crews worked a 15-hour day beginning at midnight Tuesday.

“There is a lot of quantity out there so our downtown cleanup crew is taking much longer than it usually does,” Lang said. “We hope that it’s not going to stay like this all winter long.”

Lang said residential areas within the city limits are struggling because as plows pile snowbanks along the curb, the roads get narrower. Plow crews will be working on widening roads once the roads are cleared and drivable, he said.

As long as significant amounts of new snowfall stay away, residential areas will be seeing wider streets in the coming weeks.

“With the snow we currently have, it would take us about two weeks to go around and take our blowers and widen our roadways like Oakland Avenue,” Lang said. “That is just an ongoing process.”

One of the city’s snow blowers is out of service and crews are waiting on parts to arrive so it can be fixed. In the meantime, the county is lending a snow blower to the city.

Lang said the county is not suffering from the loan, though.

“I don’t think it’s affecting the county, otherwise they wouldn’t allow us to use it,” he said. “It’s just something that, on a short-term basis, they are doing without.”