Mid-Missouri public works departments prepare for overnight snow and morning commute
With cooler weather and the possibility of snow coming in Sunday night, mid-Missouri public works departments have different approaches to prepare roads for Monday morning’s commute.
“People aren’t ready, particularly in the mindset of winter driving this early, so we just want to keep reminding people to drive with caution, but we’re doing what we can, we’ll have trucks out there treating those potentially slick spots,” Columbia Public Works Department’s Barry Dalton said.
Columbia will have eight crews treating the roads beginning at 4 a.m. Monday.
Jefferson City and Cole County’s public works divisions have crews on standby.
“Our trucks are all ready to go, all we’re doing now is we have people who live around the county that are just monitoring the roads,” Cole County Public Works Larry Bishop told ABC 17 News Sunday.
Jefferson City Public Works’ operations divisions director said they have “23 guys that are ready to come in and plow, plus some support staff and supervisors.”
The Missouri Department of Transportation also said it has crews on standby a couple of hours prior to the expected snowfall. The department tweeted a warning to drivers that “we could be in for some more bad weather later tonight and on Monday.” The department recommended checking road conditions before heading out,
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Columbia Public Works also took to Twitter to let drivers know how its division is preparing.
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“The slickness is what we’re worried about and what we’re fighting,” Dalton said. “If the weather conditions or road conditions change we have the ability to ramp that up to bring in more plow drivers as the need arises.”
Dalton said if the ground reaches below freezing, below 32 degrees, that brings in the possibility for ice on the roads, but they are prepared.
“As the event approaches the engineers will also look out their windows, they go out to the streets, they take temperatures on the streets to measure the pavement temperatures.”
