Saturday's immense snowstorm may have been a real strain from a cleanup standpoint, but its overall impact wasn't nearly as wretched as it could have been.

Several local emergency management coordinators agreed that the cooperation of everyone - from residents to motorists to clean up crews - was a total team effort.Mark Nalesnik, Carbon County Emergency Management Agency coordinator, said there were "no real issues of incidents as a result of the storm."However, he said travel conditions were "treacherous.""There were some challenges on getting some essential travel personnel that need to be at work because of their professions, especially health care, doctors," Nalesnik said. "We assisted with some of those challenges, along with the assistance of the state police."Nalesnik added, "It was a team effort. Everybody did their best to get the tasks completed."There were no issues to speak of with regard to power outages, Nalesnik said."Due to the very dry, powdery snow that we had, it didn't cause any issues with trees falling on wires," he said. "If we had what would have been heavy, wet, slushy snow, then we would have likely had power outages with trees falling on the wires."Maryellen Keegan, Monroe County Emergency Management deputy director, said, "We were quite impressed that the residents really heeded the warning.""There was some travel on the roadways, but for the most part, traffic along the roadways was really at a minimum, and that was great for road clearing crews because they weren't competing with cars on the roadways," Keegan said. "There were a few minor incidents, but overall, it was rather uneventful on the roadway for us in Monroe County."Keegan noted there was one minor power outage early Saturday morning in the Pocono Lake area that affected about 60 customers.John M Matz, Schuylkill County Emergency Management Agency coordinator, said that while far from perfect, the road conditions are better than they were."Road conditions, they're improving, (certainly) less than ideal," Matz said. "Many of the boroughs, the city of Pottsville, are doing removal, trying to clear the streets so parking in the downtown area can continue. Many of the side streets remain narrow, and some cars are still parked in."But, Matz said he believes the timing of the storm and that it occurred on the weekend, "worked to our benefit because there were a lot less people on the highway trying to make it to work."Additionally, the high winds we expected Saturday afternoon and into the evening really didn't come about," he said. "Very little in terms of power outages; certainly nothing widespread."Matz said between 18-24 inches of snow fell based on varying reports from across the county."People are just going to have to be patient, exercise extreme caution," he said."The road crews are doing a great job; we're going to have be patient, going forward, and it is expected we'll get some melting over the next few days."