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Staff photo/Mary Bargdill
Workers clear Spring Street in St. Marys during this weekend’s winter storm that left several inches of snow across the area. Blustery winds hampered travelers throughout the weekend and caused school delays and closings on Monday.
By MARY BARGDILL
Staff Writer
ST. MARYS — Despite snow covered roads, high winds and freezing temperatures, Auglaize County got off lucky.
Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Agency for Auglaize County Troy Anderson said that despite the amount of snow received and the high winds, the winter storm was not as bad as it could have been.
“We dodged the bullet for the second storm in a row,” Anderson said. “We did not get the six to 10 inches they were predicting on top of what we got on Saturday. Most of it went further north. We did get a significant amount, but we didn’t get what they were predicting.”
Anderson said residents of Auglaize County avoided one of the biggest concerns of major winter storms — power outages.
“I didn’t know if any power outages. We never received a call. We had our plans and policies in place, but we never had to utilize any of them,” he said.
By the time the end of the weekend, four to six inches of snow, with an average of eight inches in some places, had fallen in Auglaize County.
“It looks like the average wind gust was about 25 mph for the county,” Anderson said.
Outside of New Bremen there were gusts of wind at 28 mile an hour. In the open areas, there were gusts of wind in the 30s in the open areas. On Saturday and Sunday, snow plows on the county roads had trouble making headway because of the heavy winds.
“It seemed like it was the north-south roads that were drifting shut,” Anderson said.
Anderson said he had not heard of any deaths caused by the winter snow storm.
Superintendent of General Services for the city of St. Marys, Denny Craft, said crews were out for six hours on Saturday, and between 12 and 13 hours on Sunday.
“Once the snow quit we were pretty fortunate to get stuff plowed back,” Craft said. “We didn’t get the high winds they were calling for. It went pretty good.”
Craft said one of the greatest difficulties was trying to plow snow around parked vehicles. Another concern many residents may not be aware of is if they shovel snow out onto a city street after snow plows have already plowed open the street, they are liable if a vehicle gets into an accident because if it, he said.
“If they throw snow out (on the street), they are liable for it,” Craft said.
Craft said city crews will clear out piles of snow along Spring later this evening.
There were no power outages due to the winter storm according to St. Marys Safety Service Director Tom Hitchcock.
Wapakoneta weather observer Dan Dietz reported a total of 7.5 inches during the past two days, with 4 inches falling Saturday and 3.5 inches on Sunday. A total of 13.4 inches of snow has fallen in December.
The storm prompted county, city and township snow crews to hit the streets Saturday afternoon and most of the day Sunday. Crews returned to the roadways this morning.
Auglaize County Engineer Doug Reinhart said crews plowed the roads for a second straight day, starting at 5:30 a.m. Sunday and finishing up after it got dark.
“The wind laid down in the middle of the afternoon, which the wind was our greatest concern — that it would blow the roads shut again,” Reinhart said Sunday in a telephone interview. “They were first predicting 30 mph sustained winds with gusts up to 40 mph, and I don’t think we saw that so we were able to stay ahead of the storm and keep the roads cleared of snow.”
He said the most daunting problem for his men was a short period of rain at midnight Sunday caused icy conditions under the snow. With falling temperatures Sunday night, salting the roadways would have been futile.
To combat the problem, Reinhart said he told his crews to report to work at 5 a.m. today to start plowing and dumping more grit, a salt and limestone mixture, to help with the ice.
“We experienced some minor drifting overnight,” Reinhart said about grit melting the snow on 351-miles of county roadways this morning. “Fifteen trucks were on the road at 5 a.m. working the roads covered with packed snow and ice.
“With the wind at 15 mph or less today, even though the temperature is going to be below freezing, we are hoping that the sunshine will help us to begin the process of achieving bare pavement.”
Reinhart anticipates county crews applying more than 200 tons of salt mixed with 400 tons of grit during the past two days. They used more than 1,700 gallons of diesel fuel.
He ordered 900 tons of pure salt at the beginning of the season and is ordering another 300 tons of salt.
The county mixes the salt with limestone and sells it to townships, villages, cities and school districts.
He declared all the roadways as passable, and crews spent additional time Sunday clearing and salting intersections and curves.
“It was not as bad as we anticipated because the wind speed didn’t quite peak as they had predicted which is good, but there is a layer of ice underneath,” Reinhart said. “I think we got the snow that they predicted, but I don’t think we got the wind they forecast. I anticipated it would be 10 minutes after we plowed that the roads would be snow covered again — that didn’t happen.
“I am sure the roads are passable, but they really have to proceed with caution,” he said.
Auglaize County Sheriff Al Solomon said he thought many people opted against driving on the roads Sunday when a second wave of the storm hit Sunday.
“We have some minor accidents but not a whole lot of them today (Sunday),” Solomon said Sunday in a telephone interview. “When the storm first hit Saturday, we and the State Highway Patrol responded to quite a few.”
The Wapakoneta Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol reported 11 crashes and collisions during the past weekend.
William Laney contributed to this story. |
