Crews at the Sioux Falls Street Department are ready to go. One crew will be coming in at 8:00a.m. Thursday morning and they will stay until 4:00p.m. Thursday afternoon. Since the snow is expected to start falling in Sioux Falls in the afternoon a very large crew of about 100 people will come in at 4:00p.m. Thursday afternoon and will work until Midnight. Then another large crew will come in to relieve that crew at Midnight. From there the Street Department says they will work 12 hour shifts until the snow is done and moved safely off the streets.
We spoke with Galynn Huber with the Sioux Falls Street Department. He says although we didn't get a lot of snow during the last storm, what did fall was very wet, heavy snow. He says they used blades to push that slush off to the side of the road to make streets a little safer for drivers. Huber says a problem started when our temperatures took a big drop. That slush started to freeze and has now created a lot of thick ice on many Sioux Falls Streets. "Its formed ice ruts, almost ice pot holes. It gets really rough to drive through and so we want to cut that to make it a little easier for vehicles to get through and that's what we've been doing here for the last week," Huber said.
Huber says this ice has formed all over town, including residential areas and even on some emergency routes. Huber is actually a little hopeful looking into this storm. He says if we get over 2 inches of snow he will likely order a snow alert for the city of Sioux Falls. He says the good part about that would be his crews would then plow the entire city. By doing so he thinks a lot of those ice ruts will peel off and make it a little better traveling because every street in the city will be plowed out.
Huber also says some of the Street Department crew wouldn't mind working some extra hours over the next few days. He says last year and this year have been pretty quiet. "Some years I've been pretty tight around this time with chemicals and crossing our fingers that we don't have any snow but this year we are good with chemicals. We have plenty of salt and liquid. I think some of the guys are excited for some extra hours," Huber said.
Join the KSFY Morning News for the latest as the snowy weather moves in.
