Nutter: 'Storm 1 and Storm 2' difficult

JUST LIKE Dr. Seuss' Thing 1 and Thing 2, Philadelphia's "Storm 1 and Storm 2" - as Mayor Nutter is calling Sunday's wintry weather and today's predicted conditions - are proving rather troublesome.

"The challenge here again is the ice, rain, snow and the refreezing process," Nutter said. "You get ice that binds to the asphalt even when the new snow is on top of it. You can plow the snow; it doesn't work as well with ice once it literally binds to the asphalt. That is a challenge, not only here but everywhere else."

Streets Department workers, Nutter said, finished the job on Storm 1 at noon yesterday - but they were expected back again for Storm 2 at midnight, when a "full deployment" of 160 vehicles was to canvass Philadelphia to scatter salt. The city cannot "brine" the streets, Nutter said, because they are already wet.

"This is a well-experienced team. We have a plan," he said. "We actually do know what we're doing."

Storm 2 was expected to begin about 7 to 9 a.m. today and to wrap up about 6 to 8 p.m. - perfectly and inconveniently coinciding with the morning and evening rush hours. Nutter cautioned that the forecast was evolving.

The mayor asked that residents clear a 3-foot walkway outside homes within six hours after precipitation has ended - and that they not dump their shoveled snow onto the streets in "classic Philadelphia style."

It was hoped that all of that preparation would make it easier to clean up the Storms' mess than it was to fix the one created by the Things:

"And this mess is so big / And so deep and so tall / We cannot pick it up. / There is no way at all!"