Southland street crews ready to plow? It’s a yes-snow question
BY SUSAN DEMAR LAFFERTY slafferty@southtownstar.com January 11, 2012 7:24PM
Workers load plows with salt in preparation for the first large snowfall of the winter at the Cook County Highway Department Maintenance Facility in Orland Park, Illinois, Wednesday, January, 11, 2012. | Joseph P. Meier~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: February 13, 2012 9:19AM
If weather forecasters are on target, snow finally will be falling in the Chicago area Thursday, and will continue all day long, with 5 to 7 inches accumulating in the south suburbs, according to the National Weather Service.
Local snowplow drivers, who have been ready and waiting for months, say, “Bring it on.”
“We’re as ready as we always are from November to April,” Tinley Park public works director Dale Schepers said. “Typically by this time we’ve had eight or 10 events.”
Last year between Dec. 1 and Jan. 10, the Chicago region had 16.8 inches of snow — a “considerable difference” from this winter, weather service meteorologist Samuel Shea said.
Most highway department bosses said they can’t remember such a late date for a first real snowfall.
That’s because the latest date for a first snowfall of an inch or more was Jan. 17, 1899, according to the weather service.
Assuming that much does fall Thursday, we were less than a week away from breaking a 113-year-old record.
“It’s about time we get snow,” Will County Highway Commissioner Bruce Gould said. “Jan. 10 and it’s 50 degrees — this is craziness.”
Like all members of a snowplowing crew, he has been “sitting and waiting” for this day.
Preparations began long before the first flake fell. Crews know their schedules, and their plows and salt spreaders have been tuned up since fall.
Orland Park workers spread a light application of salt on the village’s streets Wednesday to get a jump on the storm, public works director Ed Wilmes said.
“We’ve been tracking the storm closely. We had a staff meeting at the end of the day (Wednesday) and everyone went home to get a good night’s sleep,” he said.
Mokena just completed construction of its new salt dome Friday and was busy filling it this week, public works director Lou Tiberi said. It holds three times more salt than the old one — 3,000 tons — so the village won’t run out, he said.
Salt spreaders will be loaded up later, just before hitting the streets.
“We don’t fill it and let it sit because it draws moisture,” Gould said. “And then we would have a 10-pound block of salt.”
It takes only a couple of minutes to load the salt, Schepers said.
Drivers can be mobilized within 30 to 60 minutes of getting the call to action.
“They know their routes well, so they don’t have to read signs obscured in the blowing snow. It’s memorized by landmarks,” Schepers said.
That is expected to be the scenario later Thursday night. The weather service predicts winds will increase to 15 to 25 mph out of the northwest, with gusts up to 35 mph, causing considerable drifting and making travel difficult in open areas.
It’s not quite the way Wilmes would have ordered it.
“We always want the first couple of snowfalls to be light, so snowplow drivers as well as motorists remember what to do,” Wilmes said.
He reminded residents not to park on the streets until after they are cleared.
John Schaeffer, Homewood’s public works director, said he has kept an ear tuned to the weather forecast.
“By Tuesday, we knew we would be getting something,” he said.
This storm is likely to start in the morning, when crews already are on the clock, street superintendents said.
If snowplows or salt spreaders are required in the middle of the night, most rely on local police — who are out patrolling — to let them know the road conditions.
In Tinley Park, street crews work 12-hour shifts November through April, so they are always available, Schepers said. But he was not about to try to predict the unpredictable weather.
“When it’s on the ground, we’ll take care of it,” he said.
“If we don’t have a lot of snow, that’s OK with me,” Schaeffer said.
The lateness of the snowfall has made it easy on their budgets — so far. Crews have been out a couple of times this season to salt the roads, but plow blades were idle.
But public works directors were remaining cautious about costs, not knowing what is coming down the road.
“It doesn’t matter how much we save now; we could have a bad February,” Tiberi said.
It’s difficult for them to predict what a single snow event could cost because there are so many variables — timing, wind, wetness, accumulation.
For the long-range forecast, the weather service is calling for warmer, wetter conditions than normal, Shea said. But “warmer” may only mean 32 degrees, given that Chicago’s average at this time of year is between 17 and 31 degrees, he said.
“Only seven more weeks till March,” Gould said.
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