With more snow on the way, just a day after Sunday’s unexpected storm dumped several inches of snow across Central Pennsylvania, people and PennDOT are making sure they’re not caught off-guard this time.
They’re hitting the roadways and hitting the stores for supplies.
Aisle 29, the winter weather supplies aisle, at the Lowe’s in Springettsbury Township is the busiest in the store at the moment.
Shoppers like Terry Jones are determined to be prepared this time around, after Sunday’s wallop.
“It caught me by surprise yesterday and it was really rough this morning trying to scrape the windows on my car,” he said. “I’m getting ice salt, and some window tape. We put the insulation in for the windows.”
For others, “stocking up” means something slightly different.
“Get a couple snacks, so when it’s snowing, I can look out and eat snacks and watch it snow at the same time,” said Michael Leisenring of York.
Either way, workers are constantly restocking these shelves.
“Heavy foot traffic with the storm, a lot of salt, a lot of ice melt, a lot of interest in snow blowers, a lot of folks interested in snow shovels,” said Justin Bellew, an assistant store manager.
Meanwhile, PennDOT is prepping nearly 350 plow trucks to respond where needed in South Central Pa’s eight-county region. But surprisingly, the preps don’t include salting roadways.
“Fortunately, right now we have enough salt residue on the highway that we don’t have to pre-treat for tomorrow’s storm, so at this point, we’re making sure we have all the materials we need and all of the stockpiles and the trucks are in good repair and ready to go,” said Michael Martin, PennDOT’s York County maintenance manager.
Though, two snowstorms so close together can take its toll.
“It wears on manpower,” Martin said. “Fortunately, we have a little bit of a break, one day break, almost a 24-hour break so people can get home and get rested.”
“I’m too old for that kind of stuff,” Jones said.
PennDOT is activating an incident command center at 2 a.m. to coordinate crews. All crews will be in by 4 a.m. Tuesday to respond to road conditions.