COEUR d’ALENE — Coeur d’Alene business owners Eva Itskos and Jim Hightower have polar-opposite perspectives on the relentless snowfall that battered the area in February.

For Hightower, owner of four Domino’s franchises in Kootenai County, the nasty weather delivered a boost in sales.

But for Itskos, owner of The Olympia restaurant in downtown Coeur d’Alene, it served up a disappointing drop in clientele.

“I’d say we were down about 15 percent for the month as a whole,” Itskos said Friday. “It’s definitely the weather because nothing else changed.”

On the flip side, Hightower said sales at his stores were up about 10 percent compared with January. And he thanked Mother Nature for that.

“We’re busy when people stay home,” he said. “When people are at the parks or golf courses, they don’t order much pizza. But when they’re cooped up indoors we get busy. And when the weather gets really bad like it did in February, we’re really busy.”

Hightower, who owns and operates the Domino’s stores with his wife, Missy, said a 10 percent increase in sales roughly translates to a jump in deliveries of about 300 to 400 per week.

Pizza delivery drivers are not the only ones who kick it into high gear when the winter weather turns nasty.

Bryce Lund, co-owner of Coeur d’Alene Snow Plowing, said his rigs were running around the clock for much of the month.

“At one point, I was out there (plowing) for 30 hours straight,” Lund said. “There was a string of four to five continuous days where we were basically nonstop. It’s the most amount of work we’ve had in such a short period of time.”

Lund said the biggest problem for his plowers was finding a place to put all the snow.

“Parking lots and roadways were getting so full of snow it was nearly impossible to put it anyplace without impeding parking spots or roadways,” he said. “We had to haul a lot of it away.”

At Coeur d’Alene Tractor, a slow start to winter gave way to brisker-than-expected sales once the snow started to fly. And fly and fly, said company president John Adams.

“Ten days ago, we had 65 snow blowers and we were starting to think that we would have to store them until next winter,” Adams said. “Then, in a matter of seven days, they all just disappeared.”

Despite the slump in sales at The Olympia, Itskos said she was thankful for a supportive Coeur d’Alene Downtown Association, which has helped businesses cope with the “blizzardy mess.”

“It doesn’t matter what you do to attract business, some people are just going to stay indoors when it gets this bad,” she said. “We just feel lucky to keep our doors open through all this and to have the (downtown) association support all of us down here.”