Last week, Leo Saavedra was all set for the grand opening of Tacos Don Memos, his Mexican food truck on 38th and Walnut streets.
Then the snow came, the city failed to remove it quickly, and Saavedra's plans had to change.
"They must do something about the snow," Saavedra said as his truck opened this week, still surrounded by ice. "They didn't clean it fast enough."
Last Wednesday's snowstorm ripped through the Northeast, closing schools and delaying flights across the region.
But in Philadelphia, the snow caused even more problems as streets across the city were left nearly unnavigable.
City officials say that a faulty weather forecast was to blame for the roads' poor condition.
Kevin Koch, chief highway engineer for the Philadelphia Streets Department, explained that the city was prepared for a warmer storm with precipitation that would have consisted mostly of snow, meaning salt wasn't likely to be necessary in the clean-up process.
But when a colder, icier storm hit, Koch knew it was going to be a long day.
"The news channels and weather service took 10 degrees out of their forecast," he said, adding that, had the city known of the temperature drop, they would have salted the streets earlier.
Even once the storm had passed, Koch said, the city faced an uphill battle for the remainder of the week.
"We were salting for days trying to get this to go away," Koch said. "It takes five times the salt at 20 degrees to melt the same amount of ice at 30 degrees."
The University also plays a role in the snow clean-up process, though its responsibility is limited to the sidewalks around campus and the campus itself.
On campus, Penn Facilities deploys four pick-up trucks with plows and salt spreaders and four 'gators' - mini-bulldozers with plows and brooms designed to access those places too small for a full-sized vehicle.
But even with this fleet, Penn facilities can't be everywhere at once.
"We are constantly prioritizing [our efforts] throughout the campus, where people are walking - Locust Walk, Huntsman, the most trafficked areas on campus," Facilities official Andrew Zitcer said. "We come in on a rotating basis throughout the day."
Zitcer also noted the large amount of salt being used in the clean-up process.
"We've probably purchased 200 tons of salt this year, which is much higher than average," he said.
But despite the city's and the University's efforts, many people could not avoid the frustration of being stuck in the snow.
"The city's not doing a good job," said area resident Kim Johnson as she struggled to move her truck from out of the slush. "They seemed totally unprepared."
But for Koch, the only thing that officials can do is continue being persistent.
"We went over some of [our] routes seven, eight times," he said. "You finish the route, and you start again."
