CLEVELAND — For all the joy Lake Erie provides for much of the year, it has its darker months, and November can be one of them. It can be warm and sunny one day, cold and snowy the next. That's why the folks at ODOT make sure they're ready to go before we hit Halloween.
"In October, we do a 150-point inspection on all of our fleet vehicles that we use for ice and snow operations," said ODOT Spokesperson Amanda McFarland. "Our equipment has been ready for several weeks now."
They have over 300,000 tons of salt on hand, which is more than they used all of last year and their trucks and crews have been ready to roll for weeks and will hit the road as needed.
"We're going to have around 250 trucks working the roads around the clock to help make sure that people can get to their destinations safely throughout the day tomorrow and Friday."
The folks at Cleveland Hopkins are watching as well. Preparing for winter is a nearly year-round job here, with equipment built with the safety of the planes and its passengers in mind.
"The machines we have here, you don't see them in other industries, you're not going to find them at ODOT, you're not going to find them at construction sites or anything like that. They are specific to airports," said Superintendent of Airport Vehicle Maintainance Darwin McClellan. "They are specific to runway maintainance."
They can't use salt on the runways so they rely on other chemicals along with plows, blowers and brushes.
"Our main goal is to clear the runway within 30 minutes," said Patrick Ruedisueli, assistant commissioner of airport operations. "That's our target, that's what we aim to do everytime."
This is a week many who follow Lake Effect snow have circled on their calendars, especially on the eastern side of the lake in Western New York. Ten years ago this week the city of Buffalo got hit with 7-feet of snow in five days. A storm that had people shoveling not just their driveways and walks but their roofs. And two years ago this week, you'll remember a similar-sized storm that forced the Browns game in Buffalo to be moved to Detroit.
While Northeast Ohio isn't as likely to get hit with storms of that size because of our position on the lake, we often get hit with ones that can still produce several inches of snow in an hour—another thing ODOT is constantly monitoring.
"We do have the ability to shift crews to other areas if need be," McFarland said. "We know the primary snow belt is eastern Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga [and] Ashtabula counties. If we know that its going to start hitting really, really hard in Lake and Geauga Counties but not so much on the west side of Cuyahoga or maybe to the south in Trumbull County, we can shift crews to those areas to help keep the roadways as safe and passable as possible."
But they also need your help with that. They had 22 plows hit last winter, and they encourage drivers not to crowd the plows for your safety and theirs.
