Road Crews are Gearing Up for a Potential Winter Storm this Weekend.

Road crews are gearing up for a potential winter storm this weekend.

A Winter Storm Watch is in effect starting Saturday evening. A total of 5-8 inches of heavy wet snow is possible into Sunday, with heaviest falling Saturday night into Sunday morning.

City of Kenton Public Works Superintendent Burl Helton said his crew is preparing now, “Right now we’re getting, basically getting all of our dump trucks, which most of them have plows on them already, but we make sure they’re all full of fuel, oil checked in them, and then we get all the small pickups with there plows on them and get them all filled with fuel. That way, it just makes it easier for the guys to come in and be able to just get right on it, get in the truck and take right off.”

If the snow hits as forecast, Helton said it’s all hands on deck, “We come in, I’m going to be bringing everybody in, because I like to try to always put a dump truck and a pickup in each ward and run at least four big trucks on the main roads first and then we go in each ward with a dump truck and a pickup.”

Chris O’Flaherty, Transportation Administrator for the Ohio Department of Transportation-Hardin County said prep work has started for his crew as well, “Yesterday and today, we were out brining the roads, getting our bridge decks, because they tend to freeze over first, and then getting our trucks ready for snow and ice, putting the plows on and getting the brine inside the tanks on our trucks.”

Once the snow starts, O’Flaherty said the crews will hit the roads, “We run twelve hour shifts here in Hardin County, so we’ve got an A and B shift, so we’ll start, it looks the snow is coming in late, so the B shift will start it off, and then we’ll go into A shift working twelve hours, and we’ll be there until the snow is off the road.”

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