SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — You’ll need to add storm drains to your list of post-blizzard dig-out duties. With warmer weather ahead and a chance of rain for early next week, those inlets covered in snow can create flooding problems in your neighborhood if they’re not cleared. A map at the City of Sioux Falls website can help you locate those drains that are otherwise hard to find underneath all that snow.

Shoveling out from the blizzard, Kyle Foster makes a quick detour from his sidewalk to the curb and the snow-covered storm drain near his east-side Sioux Falls home.

“You don’t want to have flooding, otherwise it’s all going to back up, then you got a bigger mess on your hands,” Foster said.

The City of Sioux Falls is hoping more people like Foster take it upon themselves to clear snow from the storm drains.

“You know, with 17-thousand storm drains in town, it’s a significant undertaking if our crews were having to try and do all that,” City Engineer Andy Berg said.

But so many of those storm drains are hidden underneath a thick blanket of snow. So the city has created a map identifying where each storm drain is located, represented by a water drop inside a blue dot.

“If you’re going to go to your residence, punch in your address down in the bottom, it will zoom right to that spot and then those blue dots will show up,” Berg said.

The map also allows you to alert the city if there’s too much snow and ice clogging the storm drain for you to remove on your own.

“If it’s totally ice-shut, you click on the blue dot and there’s a link on there to report it as needed to be opened-up and that creates a work order for our team,” Berg said.

There’s also a low-tech way to identify a storm drain in your neighborhood. Sometimes, the steam from below ground will melt away the snow. You’ll still have to dig-out the rest of the snow around it, though.

For shovelers like Foster, the map offered by the city should be a big help in pinpointing storm drains that might otherwise go unnoticed, until it’s too late.

“People got to know where stuff is or if they don’t know it’s there, they’re not going to pay attention to it, they’re going to have their own problems to deal with,” Foster said.

Berg says the best time to dig-out storm drains by your house is right after the city plows go through the neighborhood. That way, you’ll keep ice from building up in the grates, which makes it much harder too remove.