Crews Ready To Tackle Snow Covered Roads
DETROIT (WWJ) Macomb and Oakland Counties are gearing up for this nasty winter weather and making sure that supplies are in hand.
Macomb County Maintenance Superintendent Bob Mykytiak says their salt supply is at 3/4 capacity, "....continually over the last couple days we've been getting salt deliveries so we are probably over that number, but I'm not concerned about our salt supply at all."
Craig Bryson with the Road Commission for Oakland County says they've got plenty of salt and they'll be working continuously to deal with the snow, "We'll be going around the clock .... close to the end of the week. And that's one of the challenges for us, managing the limited manpower we have and try to stretch that manpower out over four to five days of round the clock operations."
At this point, the plan is to keep most trucks salting as long as needed during the day Tuesday (an additional 1 to 2 inches is forecast to fall during the day). They also plan to have some trucks patching potholes during the day and some continuing to break up the hard pack in subdivisions so that the hard pack does not become thicker with the new snow.
Both county operations stated that they had ample supplies on hand to counter the accumulation of snow expected.
"We've been resupplied as needed throughout the year so far, we've got about 2/3's of our salt storage facilities full, so we in good shape with that issue," Bryson said. "Of course, we are encouraging anyone who can to stay off the roads on Wednesday," he said.
Mykytiak says there is a different strategy when fighting snow of this magnitude. "In this type of storm we've got to be careful that we don't bring too many people in too early, and the bulk of the snow comes later on, we try to monitor the weather as closely as we can, and stagger our guys accordingly so we have people to work around the clock," Mykytiak said.
WWJ's City Beat Reporter Vickie Thomas is reporting that the city of Detroit is gearing up for "snow-mageddon." Ron Brundige, deputy director of Detroit's Public Works Department, says crews are treating this snowfall as two separate events: what's on the ground from Monday night, as well as what's coming Tuesday night.
"For that event, again, we'll have city crews out plowing major roads, but in the event that we do receive, uh, in excess of six inches and it looks right now that that's definitely going to occur, we'll also have contractors out plowing our residential streets," Brundige told Vickie. "We utilize contractors so that we can continue to use our city crews on focusing on the major streets."
Several Southeast Michigan cities are declaring snow emergencies, meaning people have to keep their cars and trucks off city streets. CLICK HERE for a complete list.
According to the National Weather Service, heavy snow accumulations on roads may severely affect travel, and may make it dangerous to attempt.
Forecasters say visibilities may be reduced to one mile or less in snow and blowing snow and heavy snow on trees and power-lines may cause power outages. Wind chills are expected to fall to between 0 and -5 Tuesday night.
Across the nation, early indications were ominous. By mid-morning, Tuesday, freezing rain and sleet were already pelting several states from Texas through Ohio. Parts of southwest Missouri already had 6 inches of snow by 8 a.m. About 3,000 were without power in Ohio, 2,600 in Oklahoma. Roads were ice-covered and virtually impassable in several states. Get the latest from across the nation at CBSNews.com.
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