Snow Doctors

About Snow Doctors

Fog off the Missouri gathers in the low ground where Sioux City, Nebraska, and South Dakota all meet, and on the coldest mornings it hangs under the bridges long after the rest of the city has cleared. Snow Doctors is out in that fog before dawn, running routes across the bridges and the streets that feed them, plowing while the tri-state stretch of river is still just a gray outline below. Ice takes hold fastest right there, where the damp air off the water meets the cold coming down off the bluffs, so bridge approaches and the streets nearest the river get worked first and worked again. A driveway or a lot cleared at that hour, with the fog still sitting on the water and the bridge lights barely visible, is finished well before the tri-state commute starts moving across the river for the day. Three states' worth of morning traffic crosses that same water every day, and none of it notices the fog-bound hour when the bridges were already cleared.