MoDOT, IDOT urge drivers to stay home during weekend weather
MoDOT, IDOT, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol are urging drivers to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary this weekend.
ST. LOUIS - MoDOT, IDOT, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol are urging drivers to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary this weekend.
They want people to look at their weekend plans and get to where they want to be Saturday evening and plan to stay there through Monday. Road crews will be working around the clock on both sides of the river.
At MoDOT, they will be fully staffed beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday. They will not be pretreating but will put down material ahead of and as the precipitation begins to fall Saturday evening.
“Every storm’s different. You evaluate those, and you look at the forecast the best you can, and then you make those decisions the best you can. We’ve got a lot of good folks who have done this a long time, and we all get together and decide what’s the best way to do this," District Maintenance Engineer for MoDOT Bob Becker said. "It’s going to vary across the district. There will be a different treatment in Jefferson and Franklin County than there is in St. Charles County because of the amount of snow and ice that’s coming down."
The City of St. Louis Streets Department will prioritize plowing and treatment on main routes, followed by secondary and hill routes.
“The plan has always been that we stick with our major routes first, and then once we have, we feel safe and secure that all of our major routes are passable, then we go to our secondary and our hill route streets. It’s a 12-hour operation. Just because the snow stops, we will not stop,” director of the department Betherny Williams said.
Meanwhile, in Illinois, Joseph Monroe with IDOT says they are already treating roads and bridges. All 202 plows will be in service and using brine units. They’re making sure crews have fully working generators, saws, and chains.
They’re especially concerned about Randolph and Monroe counties, with ice amounts pushing past the threshold where power lines could be damaged.
“The amount of ice accretion that some of the forecasts predict really has us concerned in the southern part of the district. When you get north of two-tenths of an inch of potential ice, that’s when you start snapping powerlines, particularly with the winds coming at the back of the storm,” Monroe said.
As always, they ask drivers to give plows and first responders plenty of room to work.
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