It was a long night for McMinnville Public Works employees, but city streets were the better for it Thursday morning.

Shortly after snow started falling Wednesday night, Public Works employees began plowing city streets. Snowplow work began around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and lasted until about 3 a.m. After going home to grab a few hours of sleep, employees were plowing again early Thursday morning.

“We put salt down for the storm we had earlier in the week because you can’t do a whole lot more than that for ice,” said Public Works director Frank Southard. “With this snow we were able to use the plows and they were pretty effective in clearing the roads. We have two snowplows and we hit all the main roads first. Then we hit the roads where we had garbage pickup on Thursday because we wanted to make sure the truck could get through.”

By late in the morning Thursday there wasn’t much left to clear, even on side streets. Temperatures climbing into the mid-30s helped the snow turn into mush.

Cold weather is expected to linger on Friday with a high of 34 degrees and a low of 14, according to the AccuWeather forecast.

The high temperature is predicted to reach 53 degrees on Sunday with highs predicted to be in the 50s or 60s all next week, AccuWeather says.