(Bloomberg) -- Scraping against the asphalt, one plow afteranother made its way down New York's busiest intersectionsovernight, noisily pushing around the snow that coated thecity.

In anticipation of the storm, which the National Weather Service had forecast could dump asmuch as 18 inches on some parts of the northeastern U.S., theNew YorkCity Department of Sanitation split its staff intotwo shifts on Wednesday, each group of 2,400 working 12 hours at atime to clear the city's roughly 6,500 miles of roads.

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$88 million snow removal budget

Clearing a city the size of New York doesn't come cheap. Thesanitation department budgeted $88 million solely for snow removalthis year. In addition to its full-time employees, the departmentalso takes on emergency snow laborers, who are paid $15an hour to shovel out places a plow can't reach, like busstops, and can earn overtime of $22.50 an hour if they work morethan 40 hours a week. Last year, the department hired between 2,000and 3,000 of these laborers in the aftermath of a majorJanuary storm.

Coordinating thousands of employees, hundreds of heavy machines,and tons of rock salt, the government faces a daunting task in snowremoval. In the past, it got some help plowing the fluffystuff, contracting out some of those responsibilities in outerboroughs to independent companies. Now, it handles all the plowingon its own, using 689 salt spreaders and 1,600 collection trucks,both fashioned with plows. The trucks are all equipped with GPS sothe city can track where they are at any time and, therefore, howmuch progress they have made.

"The only vendors we have coming in is if we have to haul snow,"said Vito Turso, the department's deputy commissioner ofpublic affairs. "If we have to go in there and start melting snow,then we bring in a contractor with dump trucks to haul the snowfrom certain areas over to the designated melting sites."

Snow removal costs the city an average of $1.8 millionan inch, according to a data analysis of costs between 2003and 2014 conducted by the city comptroller. The cost wascalculated when the city still used private contractors for somesnow removal; that factors into the price, as well as the cost ofequipment, maintenance, and overtime pay.

Snowless winter doesn't save money

A snowless winter doesn't mean the city saves money."No matter how much snow falls, the city must take certainprecautions to be ready for any eventuality. The sweet spot ofoptimal per inch costs lands at approximately 43 inches," thecomptroller's January 2015 report said. "However, if snowfallexceeds the band within 24 and 56 inches per season, history showsthat costs begin to rise again on a per inch basis due to the sheerscale of the task at hand."

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The lowest cost per inch in the time period the comptrolleranalyzed was $740,000, when it snowed 55.5 inches in 2003. Thehighest was $4.4 million an inch when it snowed just over half afoot in 2012.

New York isn't the only city paying through the nose whenit snows. Washington, D.C., overpaid for snow removal in 2016,according to reports, and during a harsh winter in 2015 Bostonwas said to have spent about $40 million, more than twice itsbudget.

No matter how big the storm, all 6,500 miles of snow have got togo.

"It's like driving from New York City to L.A. and back," Tursosaid. "We have to do that overnight. But New Yorkers expect us toget it done. And generally we do get it done."

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