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AMES, Iowa — The City of Ames snow team kept an eye on the weather, but no one knew what to expect when the weather system came over central Iowa.

“We talked at the end of the day yesterday with staff about hey, we know weather is coming in,” said Justin Clausen, Operations Manager for Ames Public Works. “We know there’s gonna be some sort of precipitation, we could have a little bit of freezing rain, or we could have what we had this morning which is over four inches of snow.”

The plows began to hit the streets at around 7 a.m. Friday morning. It takes route drivers three hours to complete their routes.

“Ones that I dread the most are the ones that end right there in the morning or right before the sun comes up,” said Clausen. “I would prefer it snow during the day because people can kind of get used to it. We can work through it that way, but when people wake up in the morning they expect the road to be cleared.”

I-35 was very slow going for commuters heading to Des Moines.

“I remembered something about snow when I got up and let my dog out this morning and then it just kept coming down more and more, and I got to get to work, nobody’s called and said works closed,” said Steve Maxwell, who lives north of the town of Maxwell.

Some like Cannon Heubner, of Ames spent the day off scooping the walks.

“I was expecting rain, not a foot and a half of snow,” said Heubner.

Ames had about 4-5 inches of snow measured on the ground.