COEUR d'ALENE - The city of Coeur d'Alene's street department is ready for the snow.

Tim Martin, street superintendent, briefed the city council Tuesday night with his crew's plan to clear the entire city of snow during the 2013-14 season, with a citywide completion goal of 38 hours.

"We start with 4 to 5 inches on the ground, or 2 inches on the roads with more expected," Martin said. "We are aggressive in how we plow. We get out ahead of many storms with de-icing and that helps keep the plows back at the shop."

Depending on how the storm comes in, Martin said the 4-to-5-inch trigger, combined with de-icing, gives the street department time to assess what is needed.

"Some of our storms come in wet and turn cold, and other times storms come in cold and turn wet," he said. "We don't want ice floors."

He said the priorities start with access to the hospitals, major arterials, steep hills and curves, the 911 center, and then major collector streets, bus routes, residential streets and cul de sacs.

There may be some issues with the snow plan, but Martin said his department is going to try and work closely with citizens to get through those.

"Bare pavement is not the goal," Martin said. "We certainly shoot for that, but I think that would be unrealistic pretty much anywhere to say we have a bare pavement policy."

Snow plows will not be clearing alleys. Residents will be encouraged to keep cars off the street after and during snow storms. Residents are still responsible for clearing sidewalks adjacent to their properties.

He said the plan has a strong communication component. The city will be informing the media on a regular basis, and the city website will be updated regularly. Social media sources such as Facebook and Twitter will also be used, along with Cable Channel 19.

"There will be pamphlets distributed throughout the city," Martin said. "Our snowline will be kept current with human contact and immediate response to many concerns."

Martin said continuous improvement is a key goal with the street department. They critique themselves after every storm and try to improve in areas that need work.

"As you can see the lane miles and arterial miles in this town continue to move upward, and our times are staying reasonably low," he said. "Why is that? I think a lot of it is the right equipment."

Based on averages over the past seven years, Martin said the city can expect to do seven citywide plows and 11 arterial plows this year. They will "gate" the snow berms in driveways more than 64,000 times this season, and plow 6,000 lane miles. And they will do that on average in 37.5 hours to complete a citywide plow.

"That's a 25 percent decrease in plowing time since 2000," he said.

Martin gave his prediction of what winter will bring this year. The Farmers' Almanac says it will be dry and chilly. The National Weather Service says it will be an average winter. Weather Works is predicting a dry winter.

"It's anyone's guess I think," he said, showing a chart that went back to 2007-2008 season that showed more than 170 inches of snow for the season, and just slightly less than that in 2008-2009.

But the average snowfall is about 69 inches a year, and he said our recent average has been slightly more than that.

"We probably don't know what is coming, but we know what we are going to name them," he said, adding the street department reached out to the middle schools to get students to name the storms.

Mackenzie Bunting and Jordyn Nowaj from Canfield Middle School won this year's storm contest with a list of storm names under the heading of "White Wonderland."

"You can see our first storm coming out this year will be called 'Apple Cider,'" Martin said, reading through some of the names. "If we get past 'Hot Chocolate,' we will have to think of something."