Temperatures are expected to hit 40 degrees in the coming week in Michigan.
The warm up should begin to melt off some of the snow that has built up over the past few months.
But the melting snow is also expected to reveal mounds of fallen tree branches, discarded Christmas trees and garbage that has been entombed in mounds of snow and ice since December.
Paul Dykema is the assistant superintendent in the city of Lansing’s Public Service Department. He says cleaning that mess up will take some time.
“What is along roadways now is pretty well frozen in. It’s got a lot of hard pack on top of it and it’s going to take that hard pact quite some time to melt down,” says Dykema, “Right now, a lot of areas of town still have two feet of snow on the ground and so we don’t know what’s there.”
In the meantime, public works departments across Michigan will be watching for flooding, as this winter’s record snowfall begins to melt away.
