KSHB 41 reporter Elyse Schoenig covers the cities of Shawnee and Mission. She also focuses on issues surrounding the cost of health care, saving for retirement and personal debt. Share your story idea with Elyse.
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The Kansas City area was coated with several inches of snow Monday thanks to the first snow of the season.
In Overland Park, Monday was also the day the city launched the newest version of its online Snow Operations Map. City spokesperson Meg Ralph said the new tool is meant to better track and communicate how snowplowing operations are going in the city.
“The hope is that this one will give us a better opportunity to tell the story of what's going on and what our crews have been doing over both the short-term and the long-term periods,” Ralph said.
Ralph said the map’s data comes from GPS transponders on snowplows that show their real-time location and status. She said the need for a more efficient map and tracking system was evident after Overland Park's maps couldn’t keep up with all the multi-day snowstorms in January 2025.
“The hope is that this one will give us a better opportunity to tell the story of what's going on, and what our crews have been doing, over both the short-term and the long-term periods,” Ralph said.
The map tool presents options to see which roads have and have not been treated or plowed, are in progress, and how many hours it’s been since a street has been treated.
Several people in Overland Park were hard at work shoveling their driveways on Monday morning, including Dana Groves.
“I live in the wrong state,” Groves said. “I need to move somewhere warm. This is terrible.”
She said the new version of the map is one she could get behind.
“I spend a lot of time on the road," Groves said. "I drive about 300 miles a month, so I tend to pay attention to where everything is."
Ralph also encouraged drivers in Overland Park to remember to give snowplows the right-of-way and to try to avoid parking in the street in neighborhoods.
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