@0xabad1dea Back when I lived in Swansea, we typically got snow one day a year. The council knew this and had a reserve of enough salt / grit for the roads for two weeks of snow. As soon as the snow started to fall, they'd get the gritters out. The parks would be a bit exciting to walk through, but roads and major footpaths were fine.

Then one year someone on the council noticed that two weeks was a bit excessive as a reserve to maintain so they cut it down to one week. Still overkill for a place where it snows one day a year.

One or two winters before I left, it snowed solidly for two weeks. After the first week, they had used up their reserves. They managed to get a bit more, but only enough for the biggest roads. Taxis gave up trying to run and a load of shops couldn't get their deliveries. When I went away for Christmas, the nearest little branches of two of the big supermarket chains had huge gaps on their shelves and were mostly out of fresh produce. I had to walk to the station because there were no taxis and the buses were on a fairly random schedule. This would normally have taken about half an hour, but dragging a suitcase over compacted ice on a steep slope meant it was over an hour (and I fell on my back once). I've no idea what folks with limited mobility did that week.

Planning for unusual weather events is going to have to become common for councils.