Winter’s first full day brought in more snow and ice throughout Western Washington including dumping three inches in Covington and Maple Valley over the weekend.

Crews in Covington have been working to keep the main roads passable, Public Works Director Glenn Akramoff said in an e-mail, while local emergency responders say the weekend was relatively quiet.

“The Public Works crew is still on 12 hours shifts covering 24 hours,” Akramoff said. “The arterials are in good shape with compact snow and ice. We are currently moving to the neighborhoods and they should be cleared sometime today or this evening at the latest.”

Akramoff said his staff was tired but had “performed at the top level possible throughout this 10 day event.”

“As of tomorrow this will be the longest snow and ice effort in Covington’s brief history,” Akramoff said. “The businesses were full on Saturday and people are able to get around Covington safely due to (maintenance crew’s) efforts.”

Despite expectations of wide spread power outages due to the wind storm that came through on Saturday, Akramoff said, there were no problems in Covington. Power outages were few and far between this weekend throughout Puget Sound according to media reports.

“There was no damage due to wind on Saturday,” Akramoff said. “We did open the ECC for about 12 hours (2PM Saturday to 1:30 AM Sunday) to monitor the situation.”

Road maintenance staff in Maple Valley were also doing everything they could to keep the roads clear, said Interim City Manager Christy Todd, so there were no road closures there, either.

“Our roads crews are working in two 12 hours shifts to keep the roads plowed and sanded, and are doing a great job,” Todd said in an e-mail.

Kyle Ohashi, spokesman for Kent Fire/Fire District 37, said that there were no significant snow related issues for the department in Covington over the weekend but that it’s been “slow going through the snow.”

Maple Valley Fire Chief Tim Lemon said that there had been no major issues related to the snow, either, because “people are being very careful.”

Cliff Mass, a meteorologist at the University of Washington, has been posting regular updates on his blog (cliffmass.blogspot.com) as he has been tracking the storm.

“Yesterday was a significant snow event for the region with the lowlands receiving 3-8 inches in general, on top of the considerable snows of the past week,” Mass posted to his blog this morning.

“The last week or so has turned into the most snowy, cold period since the great event of the last week of December 1996.”

Mass added that the area will get “a break in the action” for the next two days.

“Tuesday will be generally dry,” Mass said. “The low center is now moving south of us and this will pull some cooler air back into the region. Another strong Pacific system will be moving towards us Wednesday, but temperatures will be warmer than the last go around… which will place us in the familiar snow turning to rain, marginal temperature situation that local meteorologists love.”

Both the Kent and Tahoma school districts are on winter break starting today. Kent students return Monday, Jan. 5, while Tahoma students return Tuesday, Jan. 6.

Waste Management, which provides residential trash collection service in Maple Valley posted to its Web site today that its customer service center was closed, and that trash pick up would be suspended in cities it serves in King County due to inclement weather. Customers will be able to double up volume for their next collection.

Waste Management will post updates to its site at http://www.wmnorthwest.com/weatherboard.html.

Allied Waste of Kent, which serves Covington, did not collect trash last Friday or Saturday.

Updates are posted on Allied Waste’s Web site, http://rabanco.com/collection/kent/residential/residential.aspx.