Snow removal logs, drafted site by site from your crews' own records.

During a storm the record is scattered: crew check-ins in an app, GPS history from the trucks, texts and photos from the walk crews, spreader settings or bag counts, the dispatcher's notes, and a weather report pulled afterwards. Someone turns all of it into one log per site, often days later, when an invoice needs backup, a property manager asks what happened, or a claim letter arrives.

For the test, AI reads copies of those records for past storms and drafts each site's log: arrival and departure for every visit, the services done, the de-icer with its amount or rate, the photos with their times, the weather for the event, and the contract's trigger and deadline beside them. Whatever the records don't show is listed as missing, never inferred.

The contract sets the clock, and contracts disagree. The Columbus Metropolitan Library's snow request, issued February 5, 2026, sends crews out on their own above one inch; below an inch they wait for the library's go-ahead, and unauthorized work under an inch isn't paid. Every location is due clear by 8:00 a.m., and a snow incident runs from dispatch until the snow is cleared, ending at that deadline or four hours after the snow stops, whichever comes first. Manchester Community College's 2024 request in New Hampshire starts at about an inch, as judged by the contractor, and wants every area clear before 6:00 a.m. The draft reads each site's trigger, deadline and incident window from its own contract and sets the log's times against them.

The customer may decide what counts as proof. The library asks each team to email a photo of the finished clearing with a short narrative before leaving a location, and that email thread, sent with the invoice, is the only proof of service it accepts. Billing for snow removal there also needs a report from an independent forecasting organization certifying the total accumulation for the location's zip code, and invoices sent more than seven days after the work are refused. For a firmer weather record, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information offers certified copies of its Local Climatological Data, certified by the Department of Commerce for use as evidence in court. The draft pairs each visit with its photos and messages, and each event with the weather source your team used, by name.

De-icer belongs in the record by type and amount. New Hampshire limits the liability of commercial salt applicators certified through its Green SnowPro program, and of the owners whose sites they maintain, for hazards caused only by snow or ice, when a delay comes from following the state's winter maintenance best practices and there is no gross negligence. To claim that protection, RSA 508:22 requires a written record of the type of de-icing material, the rate or quantity used, the dates of treatment and the weather for each event, kept for three years. Manchester's request points its contractor to those state salt guidelines and wants concrete-safe salt on every walkway and entry; the library allows rock salt on blacktop only and nothing but calcium or magnesium chloride on concrete walks. The draft records material by surface, type and amount, exactly as your crews wrote it down.

Gaps are what a reviewer looks for first. A site with no check-in during an event, a visit with an arrival and no departure, a photo timed outside the visit, a treatment with no amount, a storm with no weather record: each is listed with the hours it covers, never smoothed over. The library also wants accessible parking spaces and ramps cleared on every trip, and Manchester wants snowbanks over four feet cut down, so a log that shows a lot plowed and says nothing about either leaves a question open. In New Hampshire most personal actions, injury suits among them, can be brought for three years, so the draft marks where the record is thin while the crew can still be asked.

What your snow manager decides. Your reviewer, usually the snow operations manager or whoever answers claim requests, decides what each gap means, whether a site was serviced the way its contract asks, and what goes to an insurer, a lawyer or a customer. The draft only lays out the record. None of this is legal advice.

If your reviewer says yes, logs for new storms are drafted the same way for about 30 days of the season. When the test ends in summer, that month waits for winter.

Your snow manager checks and signs off each log before it goes to a customer, an insurer or anyone else. Crews keep recording the way they do now; nothing changes in the field.

What follows is a separate decision with a separate price.