Missouri braces for wintry mix following Christmas travel chaos in the Midwest
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Missouri Department of Transportation is advising drivers to use caution during their post-holiday travels as a wet, wintry mix heads towards Missouri.
The Columbia Department of Public Works has already begun preparations, as it announced in a post on its social media that a team of nine city snowplow operators will report at 11 p.m. and will begin to pretreat bridges, curves and intersections.
The weather has already wreaked havoc on travelers across the Midwest on Monday. More than 725,000 people across South Dakota, parts of Colorado, and Nebraska were under a blizzard warning on Monday. The winter weather crippled Christmas travel.
Cold rain is expected which will gradually turn into snow overnight. That snowy mix is expected to continue falling on wet roadways on Wednesday morning.
MoDOT is urging drivers to prepare for the changing road conditions. They also advise drivers to:
- Use extra caution and slow down roadways
- Leave early
- Be especially cautious of elevated surfaces and overpasses
- Give snowplow operators room to work
- Do not tailgate or try to pass snowplows
These safety tips are especially important since MoDOT is continuing to experience a shortage of short snow plow operators for the fourth consecutive year.
“The staffing situation still remains a concern for us statewide. We are still several hundred plow operators down,” Randy Aulbur, MoDOT assistant central district engineer, told ABC 17 News.
To combat the staffing shortages Aulbur said the department has to strategize where and when staff members are used because they typically run 12-hour shifts.
“What it boils down to is: We can’t operate two 12-hour shifts fully staffed with the level we are at right now, so we try to maximize where they are going to get the biggest impact,” Alubur said. “What it ends up resulting is it takes a little longer clearing than what you normally would see.”
Check back for updates.
