Poplar Bluff Street Superintendant Jerry Lawson arrived at 6:30 a.m. Monday, a half hour early, in anticipation of the day’s expected snowfall. Sunday night’s dusting wasn’t enough to send the plows out, but Lawson was expecting as much as 10 inches to fall in the city boundaries Monday afternoon.
“It’s just a waiting game,’’ said Lawson, who supervises a crew of 14 that will tackle clearing 130 miles of city streets once the white stuff begins to accumulate. “If we go out too early and it’s still snowing, then we got to go back and redo everything.”
The snow began around 8 a.m. and was to continue through the evening. The entire Southeastern Missouri area was under a winter storm warning with 6 to 12 inches predicted in outlying areas, particularly the bootheel. And more snow was predicted to fall late Tuesday night.
Tuesday morning’s temperature is expected to feel like -13 with the wind chill, according to the National Weather Service.
Once the snow started to slow down, Lawson launched the city’s two Caterpillar motor graders, six plows and two tractors to begin clearing the city’s streets. Crews will tackle Main, Barron, Oak Grove and Shelby streets first, then splinter and begin working side streets. The crews work on 12-hour shifts from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
The forecasted snow was out-of-the-ordinary for Poplar Bluff, which Lawson said typically gets a single winter storm, and the downfall disappears within days.
“Honestly, the last three or four years, we’ve haven’t gotten enough snow to justify a budget for snow removal,’’ he said. “We’ve been running off the same salt supply probably for the last six years.’’
But with the temperatures staying below freezing for the last few days, even the salt won’t work on slicks of ice, Lawson said.
“We would be wasting money and time if we tried to put it down with this cold of a temperature,’’ Lawson said. “There will be no salt put out until it starts warming up. There’s not a melting agent you can put out right now to be effective. You have to have the right temperatures to activate this stuff.’’
The city still has on hand about 70 tons of rock salt, but that’s down from about 150 tons since last week.
Near record lows were expected for the area Tuesday morning, reaching around zero.
According to the National Weather Service, the record low for Feb. 15 in Cape Girardeau was recorded at four degrees in 1986. The record low for Feb. 16 was recorded at -2 in 2015.