This recent winter storm has provided West Michigan with an abundance of snow. However, the snowflakes themselves have been on the small side. The small snowflakes come from the cold air that has been in place. The cold air and small snowflakes can create some challenges when trying to move the snow around.
The small snowflakes do help to lessen the amount of snow that is accumulated on the paved surfaces. But with the flake size so small, the light weight snow starts to act like wet-heavy-large-sized snowflakes because there is a greater density of snowflakes on the ground. That makes the snow heavy to shovel and plow.
The cold air is making it harder to treat slippery surfaces and it is harder to get traction and leverage against the snow. As the snow compacts, it becomes harder and harder to remove that layer of snow. The cold air also does not allow much, if any melting to occur. Many of the municipalities are just spreading sand on the roads to try to help increase traction because of the cold weather.
This is West Michigan though, so cold temperatures and snow happens in the winter. We will just have to patiently wait for spring to arrive!