A February chinook can come over the Front Range and take Longmont from ten degrees to sixty in a single day, which is how snow here becomes slush by noon and ice by dark. Motycka Lawn & Snow plows ahead of that whole cycle, opening driveways and lots while the air is still cold and the blade still bites. Walks get taken to bare concrete and treated along the north side of a house, where the sun never quite reaches. The wind does half the melting; the other half is somebody with a truck out early. A cleared drive on a bright, mild afternoon is winter at its most forgiving.