O.D.O.T. Prepares for Snow Storm
ZANESVILLE, Ohio – The Muskingum County Ohio Department of Transportation employees have been preparing for the snow storm.
Southeastern Ohio will be getting varying amounts of snow fall with the northern counties receiving more snow accumulation than southern counties. It will snow during evening hours on March 13, 2017 and throughout the evening of March 14, 2017.
O.D.O.T. is spending today on preparing for the snow. Manager Phil Valentine said with the way the storm is going to come in warm on the front end, they’re probably not going to start with the tankers. Pavement temperatures will be up, so it should be fairly easy to keep up with in the initial part of the storm.
Photo By: Quay DeVoll
“So we won’t be running the straight liquids, depending as the storm progresses and we’ll see how the lake effect goes,” Valentine said. “We’ll see if our pavements do start drying out over the next couple days. We’ll see if we might veer away from them in this storm or we’ll find out the best thing to do is use straight liquids.”
O.D.O.T. employees have switched from eight-hour shifts to 12 hour shifts until the evening of Wednesday March 15, 2017 to help keep the roadways safe for drivers. Valentine said the employees are currently loading trucks with salt and de-icer fluid.
“We keep getting better and better at using the anti-icers,” Valentine said. “There are different products that we mix with our brine and stuff now. We do use that with every load of salt, we actually spray down on the salt. It helps activate it quicker, get the salt working faster when it hits.”
Valentine said the winter has been mild, but O.D.O.T. still used a fair amount of salt at the beginning of the winter.
Photo By: Quay DeVoll
“We still used a decent amount of salt in the beginning of the year, but right now because of the light February we had we’re still setting at 80% capacity about 6,000 ton in the county,” Valentine said. “So we should be good through the rest of the spring.”
According to Valentine there will be 16 to 18 drivers out salting the roads tonight. I-70 and route 60 will be salted constantly. The drivers for back roads like state route 284 and 666 will have a few routes they need to put in rotation, so those may treat one road every two to three hours. The trucks will only come back the station long enough to refill their supplies.
“They all have assigned routes in the beginning of a shift and that’s what they stay with all throughout the length of the storm,” said Valentine.
