Robin Brown is in a constant battle with Mother Nature.

As acting street operations supervisor for the City of Redmond, a lot of her job depends on weather conditions. From the temperature and whether the sun hits the pavement to rain and snow, many of the things Brown and her crew do are determined by the outside environment.

The Redmond resident said the constant cold and rain this year have made things particularly difficult for her. Brown, who has been with Redmond for 26 years, said this year’s low temperatures and constant showers are one of the reasons there are so many potholes currently on the city’s roads — of which there are many.

“We have 350 miles of right of ways in Redmond that we maintain,” she said.

Brown said potholes are formed when it’s cold and the asphalt shrinks or expands. Water gets into the subsequent cracks and freezes, adding more stress to the road surface.

Because of this year’s perpetually wet winter, Brown’s department has not been able to make any permanent repairs because they need at least a day or two of warm and dry weather for the asphalt filling to become the right consistency to bond with the pavement.

In addition to fixing potholes, Brown said street operations encompasses a number of things, from repairing and replacing street signs and cleaning up graffiti to putting lane-dividing buttons on the roads and plowing and deicing roadways when it snows.

With a button truck, street sweepers, deicing trucks and snow plows, her department is also the envy of other departments because street operations has some best equipment to work with in the city.

“(The other departments) like the toys,” she said.

Out of the many tasks she has been charged with, Brown said the 2008 snowstorms were probably the biggest challenge she has ever faced in her career. She and her team learned a lot of things about the required conditions to properly deice roads, which roads to plow first and how to educate the public on the process.

“Our snow and ice program has come a long way,” she said, proudly adding that during this winter’s snowstorms, “We were down to bare roads.”

On Friday, she spoke about the lessons she learned in 2008 as well as other aspects of her job at the Redmond Senior Center‘s (RSC) monthly First Friday Coffee Chats. The chats began fall 2009 to give the public an opportunity to get to know city officials and employees such as the mayor, chief of police and poet laureate.

Karen Phillips, program coordinator for RSC has worked with Brown during Redmond’s Derby Days and praised Brown for all the work her team puts in for the summer festival. When they have worked together, Phillips said the other woman was always willing and happy to do her part to make the event a success, from putting up barricades to removing buttons on the pavement for the bike race.

Phillips was present at Friday’s chat and learned all the other things street operations does, not realizing everything they do.

“I didn’t realize the scope,” she said. “That sounds so overwhelming. That’s a huge job that they have.”

Before coming to City of Redmond, Brown worked with the city of Kirkland for about six years in maintenance operations. She grew up in Bellevue and fell into her career path right out of high school.

Brown was considering going to culinary school but was feeling burnt out and decided she wanted a change, which brought her to Kirkland. She has worked in public works ever since.

“I did not know I would make it into a career,” she said.