Columbia crews preparing for Tuesday evening snow chances

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia road crews are scheduled to report at 7 p.m. with snow chances increasing into Tuesday evening.

Columbia Public Works announced just before 4:45 p.m. that plow crews are preparing for up to 2 inches of snow. Department spokesperson Barry Dalton said a sixteen-person crew be monitoring road conditions overnight.

"They’ll be ready to start treating all the priority routes in anticipation of, perhaps, pavement temperatures being a little slick in the morning," Dalton said early Tuesday evening.

The Public Works Facebook page shows crews will work on slick roads through Wednesday morning. Crews will closely monitor driving conditions.

The ABC 17 Stormtrack Team issued a Weather Alert Day for Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Stormtrack Chief Meteorologist Jessica Quick is tracking snow moving into Columbia between 7 and 8 p.m.

Dalton said the department is prepared for a range of impacts on Wednesday morning, including the possibility of more than an inch of snow.

"The forecast is kind of all over the place," he said.

The city has used nearly 5,000 tons of salt for pretreatment, Dalton said. In an average winter, he said, the department uses about 3,000 tons.

"It’s been an aggressive winter in that there have been a lot of small events and threats of events," Dalton said. "We haven’t been able to let our guard down. We’ve stayed active, we’ve stayed proactive."