Winter service in Sioux Falls

The worst blizzard of the century brought seven inches

On 10–11 January 1975 the National Weather Service office in Sioux Falls recorded what it still calls “the worst blizzard of the century in this area.” The snowfall was about 7 inches (18 cm). What made it the worst was everything else: gusts to 70 mph (113 km/h), wind chills to −70 °F, and visibility at the airport below a quarter of a mile for 24 hours without a break. Eight people died in South Dakota.

That storm is the shortest explanation of winter service in Sioux Falls. This is not a place that plans around volume; it plans around wind and cold. The same office’s page on the blizzard of 5–6 March 2018 reads the same way: 4 to around 10 inches of snow, winds to almost 60 mph, “whiteout conditions, and considerable blowing snow.”

The climate normals say it in numbers. On the 1991–2020 normals for Sioux Falls Foss Field, the temperature fails to rise above freezing on 65 days a year, and on 26 nights it falls to 0 °F (−18 °C) or lower. December to February averages 19.0 °F (−7.2 °C); the record low is −42 °F (−41 °C), set on 9 February 1899. Duluth gets twice the snow.

The city’s rules — a grid cleared by compass direction, a downtown hauled away by night, a sidewalk clock that restarts when the plow passes — are those of a flat, cold city, not a snowbelt one.

Around 45 inches, from five to ninety-five

The seasonal average is around 45 inches (about 115 cm). The NCEI annual normal for the airport is 44.5 inches; the sum of the monthly normals, which most summaries quote, is 45.3. Both are correct; the difference is rounding.

What falls stays: snow lies an inch or deeper on about 73 days a year.

The average hides a range few cities can match. In the NWS series back to 1893, the snowiest season was 1968–69 with 94.7 inches (241 cm) — a winter that also produced drifts to 10 feet and the record snow depth of 34 inches. The least snowy was 1930–31 with 5.4 inches. Recent seasons have swung across much of that range: 65.2 inches in 2022–23, 16.2 in 2024–25. A contractor pricing a Sioux Falls season is pricing a bandwidth, not a number.

The single-storm records belong to February 1962: 26.0 inches in 24 hours on 17–18 February, and 48.4 for the month. And the season runs late. April 2018 delivered 31.4 inches, including 14.0 in one storm on 13–14 April, and the latest heavy snow on record is 10.5 inches on 28 April 1994.

Flat prairie, a river, and pink rock

Sioux Falls sits at 1,463 feet (446 m) on the Big Sioux River, about 15 miles west of the Minnesota border. Its 81 square miles are almost entirely land — no lake, no large body of water to soften the air. The Big Sioux loops around the centre of the city and drops over the falls that named it, and the falls exist because of the rock: Sioux quartzite, pink to red, around 1.6 to 1.7 billion years old and, in the geologists’ phrase, “extremely resistant to erosion.” Falls Park, just north of downtown, is where it shows, beside the quartzite foundations of the 1881 Queen Bee Mill.

For winter service the geography reads simply. There are no hills to pre-treat, as there are in Bismarck, and no lake-effect band. Everything beyond the river cut is open prairie, and the roads out of town — I-29 north and south, I-90 west, the I-229 half-ring around the south and east — are drift and whiteout routes.

The state treats them that way. On 14 March 2026 the South Dakota DOT announced in advance, citing “heavy snow combined with sustained strong winds”, that it would close I-29 from Brookings to Sioux Falls and I-90 from Wall to the Marion Road exit (exit 395) from midnight. Marion Road is the city’s western edge: the closures ran to the city limit, and the interstates reopened the next day. The city stayed passable; the country around it did not.

Forty-eight hours — and then forty-eight hours again

The sidewalk duty is in Chapter 96 of the Code of Ordinances, under “Snow and Ice Removal”. Section 96.100(a) reads:

“The owner or person in possession of any property abutting on any sidewalk shall keep the sidewalk free from snow and ice and shall remove any snow or ice from the sidewalk within 48 hours after the termination of any snow fall, snow or ice accumulation.”

Two things matter there: the duty falls on the owner or person in possession, and the clock starts at the termination of the snowfall, not its start.

The part most residents do not know is § 96.100(b). Corner properties must keep the sidewalk clear “to the edge of the street”. And then:

“Snow and ice deposited on the sidewalk in the street removal process shall be removed within 48 hours of being deposited.”

So the 48 hours runs twice: once from the end of the storm, and again from the moment the city plow throws the street’s snow back onto a walk that had already been cleared. The second clock starts from the deposit, not from the weather.

What “clear” means was spelled out by the city’s property maintenance inspections manager, Justin Christensen, speaking to Dakota News Now in December 2025: “That’s edge to edge down to the concrete, that’s clearing out any crosswalks if you live on a corner lot or any curb cutouts that may be on your property.” The city’s snow FAQ adds the fire hydrant, to be kept clear “for 3 feet in all directions.”

Where the snow goes is regulated too. Section 96.102 covers anyone removing snow “from any sidewalk, public or private driveway, parking lot or parking area”, and outside downtown its rule is absolute: “no snow may be blown, pushed, or otherwise placed on any street at any time.” Downtown’s exception, § 96.102(c), exists because of how downtown is cleared, below.

What happens after the clock runs out

The city gives notice of the 48-hour duty once a year in the official newspaper, and the code says that is enough: the notice “need not be given personally.” The same provision sets a second deadline behind the first — if the snow or ice is not removed within 72 hours, “the city may cause the snow or ice to be removed and charge the cost to the abutting property.” Section 96.104 carries that cost forward as a special assessment.

Enforcement is by complaint and deliberately slow to start. The city’s code enforcement page states that reports made before the 48 hours have passed are not investigated. After that, a confirmed violation goes through three levels of progressive penalties — $100, $200 and $300 — plus the contractor’s costs if the city has the work done. None of it is fast or automatic, but the assessment route means the eventual bill attaches to the property rather than to a letter.

One snow alert, three zones, three clocks

The street side of a Sioux Falls winter runs on the snow removal alert, defined in § 96.121 as those times when “there is a snow accumulation on the public streets of two inches or more, or those times as the public works director, or the director’s designee declares that snow removal operations on the public streets will commence.” Two triggers: two inches on the ground, or a declaration. The city’s FAQ puts it operationally — an alert is declared “if the City of Sioux Falls plans to plow all streets” — and announces it through local news, social media and siouxfalls.gov.

Before any alert, the emergency snow routes are always live: more than 1,300 red-and-white signs mark them, and “after two inches of snow has fallen (day or night), the Street Division may plow” them, with parked vehicles subject to ticketing and towing. Then the zones, each with its own section and its own clock:

• Zone 3 — everything outside the core. Parking is “completely prohibited, on both sides and regardless of the directional run of that street, until the street is plowed curb to curb.” Plows enter these neighbourhoods “after the snow has stopped falling and emergency routes are clear.”
• Zone 2 — the older grid bounded by Russell Street, Cliff Avenue, Thirty-Third Street and Western Avenue. Under § 96.123, parking is prohibited on north–south streets from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on east–west streets from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., until plowed curb to curb — north–south by day, east–west by night.
• Zone 1 — downtown, roughly Minnesota Avenue to Third Avenue and Fourth Street to Fourteenth Street. No parking on any street from 1 to 6 a.m. on the night of snow pickup. Downtown is not plowed to the kerb; the snow is loaded and hauled out, “usually on the final night of the snow alert.”

The Thanksgiving storm of 2025 shows the sequence in real dates: emergency routes on Friday 28 November; Zone 3 from 12:30 a.m. Sunday; Zone 2 north–south from 8 a.m. Sunday and east–west from 8 p.m.; the downtown pickup on the night of Tuesday 2 December. Downtown comes last because it is not plowed, it is removed — which is why § 96.102(c) lets downtown snow go onto a street not yet cleared. It is going onto the truck anyway.

The ticket is $35, rising to $70 if unpaid after seven days without an appeal; towing and storage fees are set by contract, and § 96.125 makes clear that none of this permits parking where signs already forbid it.

Snow gates, on the second grader only

Residential streets are plowed by motor graders carrying snow gates — the hinged panel that keeps the windrow out of driveways — and the city’s rules for them are unusually exact. Snow gates “are used only during snow alerts”, city-wide. Graders run in pairs, and “only the second motorgrader that passes your driveway, or the one closest to the curb, will use the snow gate.” They “do not eliminate the potential for snow buildup”, and their use “may be suspended during snow events in which the snow is greater or wetter than their use would be effective.” Public Works Director Mark Cotter, in February 2019: “The snow gates are not intended to eliminate this snow amount. They are intended to reduce in the larger events.”

Two costs come with them. Gated graders cannot reach the kerb, so “the use of snow gates may narrow roadways, especially as the winter continues.” And mailbox access and sight lines at the driveway remain the homeowner’s job. Bismarck wrote its snow gates into the code by citizen initiative; Sioux Falls introduced them “more than a decade ago” and runs them as an operating practice with published limits.

The fleet in 2022/23, and 3,385 lane miles

The most detailed public account of the operation is a pair of KELOLAND reports with Street Operations Manager Dustin Hansen from December 2022 and January 2023; the figures are that winter’s.

The network was 3,384.91 lane miles in 2021, up from 3,060.46 in 2016 — a tenth more road in five years — over 889 centreline miles, “approximately Dallas, TX distance.” Of that, 850 lane miles are emergency routes, running within three to four blocks of most homes and businesses, and 440 secondary. Hansen’s target: “Our goal is typically in 24 to 48 hours to have all the streets cleared in the city.” A 4-inch storm took under 30 hours; 9 inches of heavy snow about 40.

The fleet in January 2023: 56 sander trucks with plows, 40 leased motor graders for residential streets, 11 contractor graders, six large snow blowers on loaders and eight loaders. The snow blast machine that feeds the hauling trucks fills a sand truck “in approximately ten seconds.” And the number that says most about the local market: “Three years ago, we had 24 contractors. This year I have 11.”

Neighbours with shorter clocks

Every town around Sioux Falls has its own ordinance, and most give less time.

Brandon, to the east in Minnehaha County — the South Dakota town, not the Manitoba city — matches Sioux Falls: Chapter 10-2 of its ordinances (PDF) requires that “within forty-eight (48) hours after the termination of any snowfall, the snow accumulation shall be removed”.

Harrisburg, to the south in Lincoln County, is the one to read twice. Its codified ordinances (PDF), updated March 2026, say sidewalks must be cleared “within twenty-four hours of the end of each snow or ice event” — while the city’s own snow page says “within 48 hours of snowfall.” Both are the city’s words; this page reports the conflict rather than resolving it.

Tea, to the south-west, gives 24 hours, and during an alert every street becomes an emergency snow route. Hartford, to the west, writes the prairie into its parking rule: no parking “whenever there is a forecast or actual accumulation of new snowfall or blowing snow of two (2) inches or more” — drifting counts.

And 90 miles down the same river, Sioux City, Iowa gives twelve hours, starting only “when snow or ice is no longer falling or blowing upon the public sidewalks.” A quarter of the time — and the same recognition that here the snow is not finished when it stops falling.

On the wider plains the pattern holds: Fargo’s code works to a 9 p.m. daily deadline, while across the border Winnipeg clears its public sidewalks itself and Regina runs its own system in the same wind. Forty-eight hours is generous by regional standards. The second clock is what makes Sioux Falls distinctive.

Keeping a record where streets clear by compass

In Sioux Falls the timing questions are unusually specific. Was the walk cleared within 48 hours of the snow ending — and again within 48 hours of the plow coming past? Which night was Zone 2’s east–west pass? Was the snow gate suspended for that storm? When a season can run from 16 to 65 inches within three years, “what did we do and when” is not something to reconstruct from memory in March.

Wintertrace documents winter service operations digitally: which site was attended, when, by whom and with what material, with the weather conditions of the shift captured automatically and a PDF service record that bundles GPS track, weather data and photos. It runs on standard web hosting with PHP and MySQL, on your own server, without a subscription; your data stays with you, and the source code is public. It provides documentation support for winter service work. It is not a substitute for legal advice.

A note on all of the above

This page is general information about winter service in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, drawn from the city’s published pages, the Sioux Falls Code of Ordinances and National Weather Service records as of September 2026; the code as published online is current through an ordinance passed on 14 July 2026. It is not a substitute for legal advice and does not state what applies to any particular property. The downtown and Zone 3 sections (§ 96.122 and § 96.124) are summarised from the city’s code enforcement page rather than quoted; the fleet figures are from the 2022/23 winter; Harrisburg’s two deadlines are reported as published. Check the city’s current pages and the ordinance before relying on anything here.