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Seattle reportedly handled the winter snowstorm that shut down schools and government offices in early February much better than in the past.

Crews went on 12-hour shifts that began before the bulk of the storm hit, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation. That work included treating main roads, elevated structures and overpasses with salt.

By the time many woke up on Feb. 6 to a snow-covered city, the department had already been out in full force.

But is all that pre-treatment ahead of a storm — specifically de-icing — bad for the environment?

University of Washington Professor of Meteorology told he was inclined to study the impacts of winter preparation after the .

The city, Mass says, didn’t salt its roads ahead of the storm and the “place turned into an ice rink.” The storm crippled the city for days.

It was similar to the 2008 storm in Seattle when the city stuck with a policy that kept crews from using salt during major storms out of environment concerns. After the fact, then-Mayor .

Winter weather and salt

Mass says the city didn’t need to be concerned in the first place because the amount of salt used to de-ice roads wouldn’t be enough to have an adverse impact on the environment.

Why?

“There is a certain amount of salt that falls out of the sky naturally,” Mass said.

According to Mass, the salty water that evaporates along the Washington coast travels east and then dumps onto our city streets. About 200 tons of salt falls over the Seattle area per year, Mass says.

Mass says about half of that is used during a major storm event to keep our roadways clear.

That, according to Mass, leads him to believe that using salt won’t hurt our environment, even the Puget Sound — at least the typical amount.

“You’d have to have an immense amount of salt to change the salinity of Puget Sound,” he said. He added that he confirmed that with experts at the University of Washington.

And the reason salt works so well if it is applied before snowfall: It prevents the snow from bonding with the road, Mass says.

Mass says Portland is already changing how it tackles winter weather. Maybe next winter Seattle won’t have to send backup down to Portland.