County prepares for winter

    Washington County employees are slowly but surely making preparations for the coming winter weather. County Engineer David Patterson said that they usually start getting ready for snow and ice in early November. He said the county workers are still in construction-mode because a rainy summer hindered building and road projects on the county?s agenda.

    ?We?re still using our equipment to do our summer construction work,? said Patterson.

    Patterson remarked that even if it snows in November, it is usually so light that it melts without the aid of any human. He said that when the heavy snow comes later on, the county will have a new snow plow at its disposal. He said that truck was delivered one month ago. It is outfitted with hydraulics to manipulate snow attachments.

    ?It?s a big dump truck,? said Patterson. ?In the summer, it would haul dirt and gravel. In the winter, we?ll put a salt spreader on it and add a front end wing plow to move snow. We will use it year-round.?

    Patterson showed off that truck and many others Wednesday when two classes of preschoolers visited the maintenance garage on East Seventh Street. The classes were there to learn how the county prepares for winter weather, and how they could, too. The children tried on neon reflective vests and hard hats so they could feel like road workers. Patterson took them to the garage that holds road signs, and asked the kids if they knew the meaning of the shapes and words printed on the signs. Then the kids took turns climbing into the cab of one of the dump trucks, to find out just how high in the air the driver sits.    

    Besides the heavy machinery the road workers drive around, they also battle the winter weather with tiny grains of salt. The county spends approximately $150,000 on salt annually, and it buys it in bulk once per year. This year, it bought 1,500 tons of salt in May, which the county expects to last through the winter.

    Patterson said the county purchases the salt in the summer because it is cheaper at that time. He said other counties that don?t have large storage facilities have to pay someone else to store their salt. Washington County doesn?t have that problem, thanks to the salt shed it built a decade ago. He said some counties only have enough salt on hand to handle two or three winter events.

    Another way the county saves money on salt is by sharing transportation costs with other entities. For example, he said that when grain trucks leave for Burlington, they bring back a load of salt for Washington. This way, the county splits the cost of transportation with grain distributors.

    The salt shed is so large that it holds enough salt for both the county and the city of Washington. The city pays for the salt as it uses it throughout the winter.

    One of the advancements in technology that has helped the secondary road workers tremendously is modern weather forecasting. Patterson said the Department of Transportation (DOT) publishes very accurate 48-hour forecasts not just of weather but also of the expected pavement temperature on an hour-by-hour basis.

    ?If we know the pavement temperature will warm up, we know we don?t need to salt that day,? said Patterson. ?If the pavement temperature is about to drop, we need to get salt on them or they might be icy for a week.?    

For more, see our Oct. 27 print edition.