Jefferson City area road crews prepare for winter weather

Jefferson City Public Works and MoDOT Central District crews are preparing for the chance of snow overnight into Saturday morning.

Friday, MoDOT started pre-treating roads with liquid brine.

“That’s kind of our way to prep some of the bridges, really bridges specifically, and then some of our major routes we try to get that down,” said Randy Aulbur, the MoDOT Central District Maintenance Engineer.

MoDOT crews will begin shifts at midnight to get ahead of the chance for snow. Public works will also have crews monitoring conditions. Both departments plan to call in full crews as soon as the snow starts to fall.

Public works does not plan on putting down much salt this time because of warmer road temperatures, but those warm temperatures could present another challenge.

“With what the forecast is, I think our biggest concern is going to be that refreeze going into Saturday night,” said Britt Smith with Jefferson City Public Works.

The two departments said it has been a relatively mild winter compared to most years, but both said they are prepared to handle more.

“We’ve probably used in the neighborhood of 20,000 tons of salt for our district,” Aulbur said. “… So we’re in the neighborhood of two-thirds of what we would normally have used.”

“We’re at 100 percent of our capacity for both salt and our liquid calcium,” Smith said. “So we’re still in good shape and we still have money left in the budget at this point.”

MoDOT and public works are also looking ahead to another chance for snow Sunday night into Monday morning. Aulbur and Smith said they will be prepared to bring in full crews again, if needed.