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Snow up to 3 feet deep in parts of the Duke City, 16 dead across New Mexico, mass power outages, hundreds of collapsed or damaged roofs, freeways closed, hundreds of stranded drivers and residents.

Remember Dec. 29, 2006?

A year after a record snowfall in Albuquerque and much of the rest of New Mexico, lessons from the storm remain strong in the minds of those who had to clean up the mess.

It was a learning experience, and one that Albuquerque is much better prepared for now, said Ed Adams, the city's chief operating officer.

"No one with the city was around 50 years ago when the last storm of that magnitude hit," Adams said. "A lot of interesting things came out of it. We learned a lot."

One of the chief lessons was that the snowplow routes needed to change, Adams said, with a focus on clearing community shelters, equipment and bus storage areas first.

"During that storm we had a bunch of trees down, the weight of the snow broke limbs that fell in the road," Adams said. "We had a lot of chain saws that we couldn't get to because of where they were stored."

The city also added 100 cots to its community centers to be better prepared for stranded motorists.

And it has equipped all 25 of its dump trucks with both salt spreaders and snowplow equipment. Last year, 20 of them had either salt spreaders or snowplows or both, Adams said.

"We bought some equipment for smaller vehicles, too," Adams said. "We equipped 10 pickup trucks with plows to do smaller areas. A lot of our equipment last year was based for large road use and not smaller neighborhood areas."

City departments learned to help each other out - with Parks and Recreation retasking itself to haul salt and cinder for roads during the emergency so that more snowplows could continue clearing streets, he said.

"It was a lot of little things, and we know a lot more now," Adams said.

The state Department of Transportation also upped its preparedness in response to the storm.

This year, it has added an improved road advisory hot line and Web site to its arsenal. The hot line, at (800) 432-4269, lets users instantly choose which areas they want information on, and the site, nmroads.com, lets people look at an array of quickly updated traffic warnings around the state, said Megan Arredondo, a spokeswoman.

"You can get to the information you want faster," Arredondo said. "The department has taken several precautions in the last several months in preparation for winter storms."

The department has installed gates at the eastbound I-40 ramps at Wyoming, Eubank, Juan Tabo and Tramway boulevards to help police close down the freeway faster and not waste resources by parking an officer at each interchange, Arredondo said.

Albuquerque Public Schools is still dealing with some of the consequences of the big storm - in the form of about $30 million damage to the rooftops of 34 schools.

The district's insurance claim, with St. Paul Travelers', hasn't yet been paid, said John Dufay, APS director of maintenance and operations.

"Most of those roofs need to be replaced," Dufay said. "But we're repairing them as we can while we wait for the insurance money."

APS, which was forced to keep 89,000 students out of school for four days after the big storm, is much better prepared to clear off parking lots and sidewalks if another storm occurs, Dufay said.

"We have new equipment," he said. "We have four new snowplows, a couple new bobcats, and a front-end load for parking lots in large areas."

And the district has changed its procedures for snowstorms, prioritizing East Mountains and Foothills neighborhood schools where snow is usually the deepest, he said.

"We had a good test run on Thanksgiving weekend," Dufay said. "We were able to clear off the snow that came on that Saturday, then again on Sunday. And when Monday morning came and there was more snow it was really smooth and much easier to clear."

Still, the chance of another 50-year snowstorm ripping through the Duke City this winter is pretty slim, said Charlie Liles, former head of the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, who retired not long after the big storm.

"It's very unlikely," Liles said. "That storm - it lasted about three days - was highly unusual, with snow circulating from east to west, then from north to south, and it just focused this band of moisture that went right through Albuquerque."

This year, winter predictions have indicated La Niña conditions with warmer, drier weather, although the state has been bucking those predictions so far, said James Haro, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

"So far, what we've seen is certainly wetter conditions than normal and a little cooler conditions than normal, but we'll see how the rest of the winter plays out," Haro said. "A storm of that magnitude is pretty rare for our region, but they do occur from time to time, so it doesn't hurt to be prepared."