TOPEKA (KSNT) – The City of Topeka is ready to face an oncoming winter snow storm and is taking lessons learned from the last winter weather emergency to heart.
Jason Tryon, interim director of public works with the City of Topeka, talked about what actions the city is taking ahead of a forecasted winter storm. He said city workers have been keeping an eye on the weather forecast over the last week and taken steps to treat the roads in advance.
“So, throughout the week we’ve been having our crews out, putting down liquid treatment on the roads,” Tryon said. “So, that’s a mixture of salt and water that will prevent, hopefully, the ice and snow from sticking to the road surfaces well. We’ve had crews doing that all week on our bridges, arterials and collectors.”
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Tryon said the city’s trucks are ready to roll alongside contractors to ensure local roads are treated. He said city workers expect snow to start arriving as early as 7 p.m. on Jan. 23.
“The plows are ready, the spreaders are ready, it’s just a matter of now waiting to see when the snow falls, getting our crews out there to begin treating those roads,” Tryon said.
Ely Millard, 27 News StormTrack meteorologist, said on Jan. 23 that northeast Kansas residents should expect bitterly cold temperatures and accumulations of three to 10 inches of snow depending on where they live. Areas further north are forecasted to receive smaller accumulations of snow than regions south of I-70.
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Tryon said the City of Topeka is divided into zones with crews being deployed all at once to clear local roads. He said emphasis will be placed on clearing the busiest roads as quickly as possible.
“So, last year obviously we did have a very large amount of snowfall, it was one of the worst snowfalls we’ve had in multiple decades,” Tryon said. “Obviously, we’re always trying to improve what we’re doing and get better so we’ve reviewed how we deploy our crews, where we deploy them first, we also have an interactive snow map this year that the public can see where our crews have been and we’re looking at that information behind the scenes as well to always check and make sure are there areas that weren’t touched as many times as they needed to and we can respond as quickly as possible.”
Tryon encourages people to check out the interactive map on the City of Topeka’s website to see which roads have been treated by snow plows. The map is slated to go live on the evening of Jan. 23 as snow plow operations get underway.
The City of Topeka is also opening many downtown area parking garages to the public for people to park in for free to help ease snow plow efforts in that part of the city. For more information from the city on winter safety, click here.
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