City, county ready for bad weather

With a dusting of snow, slippery conditions throughout the county and continued cold temperatures, road crews spent Thursday patrolling and treating problem areas.

Those in charge of the city and county road departments say they are in good shape for whatever comes next.

“We’ve been out every weekend,” Clark County Road Supervisor Allan Curtis said. “We’ve used about 400 tons of salt. It looks like this weekend will be just cold weather.”

Curtis said the county keeps 800 to 900 tons of salt on hand, and has already used about 400 tons this year alone.

Winchester Public Works Director Pat Clark said his employees were out salting problem areas including intersections, steep hills and bridges Thursday for ice. Three crews were making their rounds through town, he said.

“It’s treacherous out there in spots because it’s freezing over on us,” Clark said. “I’d rather have five or six inches of snow and temperatures around freezing than this ice.”

Whether they can pre-treat roads depends on the weather.

“Sometimes, when you don’t have the rain, we’ll pre-treat the roads,” he said. Otherwise, the rain washes the salt away, he said.

Like Curtis, Clark was waiting on a delivery of salt before the weekend. Clark said he ordered about 125 tons, which would bring the city’s stockpile back up to 300 tons.

“We’ll get this shipment, and we’ll be in pretty good shape,” Clark said.

So far, road crews haven’t had to plow much snow. On the weekend of Jan 19-20, the county received less than two inches and only negligible amounts since then.

SportsPlus