Another round of Tar Heel weather

We have had five days and nights of what might be called typical North Carolina weather. The forecast snowfall of 4 to 6 inches in reality was rain Friday night followed by sleet followed by 2 to 3 inches of snow, depending on your location, Saturday morning. This will be followed on Thursday with temperatures in the 70s.

Mike Barton, the town’s director of public works, described Wednesday how the men and women in the street department and Wake Forest Power coped with a difficult situation.

“We got started at around 11 on Saturday morning and worked until 7 that night. We had a crew in overnight to take care of issues called in by Police Department since temps were so low. Came back in around 10:30 on Sunday and until last night we were working 24/7 out sanding/salting and plowing what we could.

“As you said, ice is a world of difference to deal with than snow. The main issues we had were residents parking on the streets. When we have people parking on both sides and it leaves us about a 10-foot wide lane to travel down with a 10-foot wide plow, it’s impossible so those streets were not taken care of until we made a second or third pass thru the area.

“We did brine the streets as we were working on the latest forecasts when we started, which, was only a 20 percent chance of rain on Friday evening before any of the snow would be coming in. Well, as we all know that is not what happened. Using brine for a snow event helps tremendously when it comes to being able to plow but due to the amount of rain and the temperature not dropping early enough, what we put out in brine was washed away before the sleet started. No one forecast a sleet event when our preparations started on Thursday morning.

“We have used as of this morning about 175 tons of salt and 260 tons of sand. You got to witness the number of trips in and out of the Operation Center that the dump trucks and pickups with plows made during the past 5.5 days so I hope you let folks know that we were out there doing the best we could for what we were given weather wise. I am proud of what Street Division staff have done for this weather event.” The Gazette editor lives at the intersection of Friendship Chapel Road, where the Operations Center is located, and South Main Street and certainly did see the six plows and other equipment. The town has 78 miles of roads.

Though Wake Forest Power crews were on standby, there was only one outage during five days, an overhead transformer blew out Sunday on North White Street and had to be replaced. About 10 customers were affected for about two hours.

Communications Director Bill Crabtree kept residents informed during and after the storm, urging everyone to stay off the roads and not park on the streets. “There were no serious accidents during the recent wintry weather. We’re pleased that most residents heeded the warning to stay put.”