Crews tackle Friday commute Trucks from city, townships out ahead of dicey weather
Area road crews rolled out early Friday to attack freezing rain and snow that plagued the morning commute.
Butler Township public works director Dave Meeder said he called out six trucks at 4:50 a.m. Friday to salt the township's six zones.
“The roads got slick real fast this morning with the wet snow,” Meeder said.
Three smaller trucks were added later in the morning to push slush off the roads.
Meeder said the road crew appreciated the cooperation of township residents and commuters, who gave the trucks a wide berth and refrained from tailgating.
“It's nice that people cooperate and let us go out and do our job,” he said.
Cranberry planned early
Jason Dailey, public works director in Cranberry Township, said his team met Thursday to begin planning for the snow and freezing rain.
The team perused the township's specialized weather forecast and, relying on that information and a National Weather Service advisory issued around 5 p.m. Thursday, hatched a plan to safely get everyone to work.
“We called our operators last night and prescheduled them for 4 a.m.,” Dailey said. “The challenge was the snow was falling at about an inch per hour at 5 a.m. and at those rates, it's going to be hard for any (road crew) to keep up if you're not already on it.”
At 4 a.m., the rain was beginning to change to freezing rain, he said.
“We were well in front of this event,” Dailey said.
He said 14 trucks salted the township's roads, and two additional trucks cleared township facilities such as EMS and fire stations, water tank locations and water pump stations.
“By 8:30 a.m., most of the routes had been hit three times,” Dailey said.
In the third pass, drivers used their plows to push slush to the curb and widen the lanes for vehicles.
Dailey said that as the air grew colder Friday evening, he planned for drivers to switch from salt to a magnesium chloride brine, which works better when temperatures dip into the 20s.
The township's roads were not pretreated Thursday because the liquid used by Cranberry must be applied to dry roads 24 hours ahead of a snow event.“It would have diluted (the liquid) and could have caused icing conditions faster, actually,” Dailey said.Butler's trucks rolled at 5 a.m.Tom Shuler, working foreman at the Butler Streets Department, said the city's four trucks rolled out at 5 a.m.“It was a wet snow, so everything under the snow was pretty icy,” he said.The city is divided into sections — the West End, Institute Hill, Southside and downtown. Each driver takes a section when the roads need attention.The streets with steep hills, such as Brady or South Main, are salted before the secondary streets, Shuler said.The brick streets give crews the most headaches, as the bricks hold the cold and react to salt later than the blacktop.He said there are 10 brick streets in the Institute Hill area alone, plus others throughout the city.Shuler said he and other salt truck drivers received compliments from residents on the road conditions as they made their way to work.Four inches of snow possibleChris Leonardi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, said Friday that Butler got 2 to 3 inches of snow before and during the morning rush hour and would end up with a possible total of 3 to 4 inches on Friday.He said snowfall totals are lower than usual.“We are definitely below normal, but I wouldn't say it's unprecedented,” Leonardi said.He predicted nothing more than a dusting of snow for the remainder of the weekend.“There will be a warm-up next week, so the snow won't last long,” Leonardi said. “By the time we get to Monday, it will be in the 40s again and that pretty much continues next week.”
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