{"id":192513,"date":"2026-02-25T04:38:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T04:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/192513\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T04:38:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T04:38:19","slug":"it-will-take-some-time-long-beach-city-manager-talks-blizzard-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/192513\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It Will Take Some Time’: Long Beach City Manager Talks Blizzard Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONG BEACH, NY. \u2014 The City of Long Beach was hardly the only part of Long Island to get hit by a blizzard Sunday \u2014 one that left much of the island covered in two feet of snow and over 17,000 Long Islanders without power<\/a> \u2014 but the challenge of fighting the storm on the barrier island is unique: two feet of snow have been dropped on the relatively small landmass, and there’s limited room to put it. According to City Manager Dan Creighton, however, crews have already been working throughout the night to clear roads in the city limits. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have about 40 pieces of heavy equipment out there with multiple minor pieces of equipment. We have all hands on deck,\u201d Creighton said. \u201cWe brought in people last night, pretty much as it started snowing, to prep the roads, and then we started plowing operations. We’ve been working straight through the night and then we’ve got people on duty now. Unfortunately, it keeps coming down, and it’s a pretty big storm compared to what we’re used to over the last 10 years.\u201d <\/p>\n

While crews began working on the roads Sunday, Creighton said there was one traditional snow prep tool that was absent from this round of road work: Salt. With a blizzard this immense, the city manager said road salt wouldn\u2019t have stopped snow from accumulating on streets, so the city didn’t deploy it ahead of the blizzard. <\/p>\n

\u201cTypically we do, but this time we knew there would be such an accumulation, all that [salt] really would just go to the curb line,\u201d Creighton said. \u201cSo really wouldn’t do much, so we just pretty much started plowing operations right away…As this starts to slow down, we will be plowing with the salting operation behind it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Another complicating factor has been the wind, which deposited snow on streets within minutes after they were plowed. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely makes it much more difficult because we’re plowing\u2026the plow goes by, this snow keeps coming, plus the wind, pushing it from the plows that move it to the side, and it built it right back up on the road. So it really makes it much more difficult to clear the roads,\u201d Creighton said. <\/p>\n

Creighton said the city would \u201cplay it by ear\u201d as far as starting salting operations, and asked Long Beach residents to avoid shoveling snow into streets where possible. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a difficult one, because we know land is limited. The real thing that we’d ask is to make sure, number one, you get sidewalks cleared off, so that people can get by and get around the neighborhood,\u201d Creighton said. \u201cBut we would ask everybody not to just push it right back into the street, because what happens is we plow it again, and it just takes [the snow] right back in\u2026it just creates the same problem all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the city begins looking at its snow-clearing efforts, Creighton said there are a couple of factors working in Long Beach\u2019s favor that weren\u2019t present during January\u2019s blizzard. For one, the city learned where large piles of snow would cause disruptions after January’s storm, and has been able to adjust its plans accordingly when plowing. Another friendly break for city officials was, perhaps ironically, in the weather. It’s warmer now, the city manager said, than it was when snow fell in January. That warmth, he said, might make moving the snow around a little easier. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we’re a little luckier because we don’t have the cold spell that we had after the last one,\u201d Creighton said. \u201cSo, we will be lucky enough that it won’t turn into what I call \u2018Snowcrete.\u2019 But it will take some time to do it right, because the winds are intense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH, NY. \u2014 The City of Long Beach was hardly the only part of Long Island to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-192513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}