It would be great to have the right equipment on hand when there was significant snow or ice to deal with, but in my experience such events only happen every three to twelve years, or more or less. That's a potentially long time to keep expensive equipment standing around not being used. Try that and then listen to people whine about the "waste" and how all that money could have been better spent on schools, police, and just about anything else you have a personal interest in, instead of a once in a decade (they always exaggerate) event. Oh, and be prepared for the news teams to fiercely total up the cost of storage and maintenance as they rabidly struggle to make news and justify their jobs (yeah, they do that).
The fact is that the forecast from NOAA was for a light dusting to possibly a half inch of snow. Instead it was two and a half or more inches and it came sooner than we were told it would. Even as it happened the storm tracking new shows with their three dimensional real time radars couldn't tell us how bad it was going to be. In fact there were plenty of people saying stay home, don't go out if you don't have to, if you were willing to listen.
That said, the single biggest problem was that all the schools and businesses let out at once and the roads were jammed up. Add that to the pavement getting slippery and you had the makings of a disaster.
When this happens again in 2019 people will have forgotten they don't know how to drive in the snow, the new government will lament the previous governments inadequate preparations (but it's not in the budget for next year either) and people will go to work/whatever planning to get as much done as possible before the storm hits. And when the storm does hit they'll all rush home jamming up the roads, getting in accidents, etc. and everyone will whine about how things should have been done differently and point fingers everywhere but themselves. Ah, humans, they're just so ... human.
