The Town is anticipating that rains will transition to a flash freeze sometime tomorrow morning based on the latest weather forecast. This is extremely difficult for DPW staff to address as high volumes of rain will wash away most of the surface treatments that the Town uses to prevent icing. Additionally, the Town has no mechanism to quickly and efficiently clear ice from sidewalks. The weather forecast calls for sleet through the afternoon with the potential to result in additional road icing causing conditions that will render our treatments less effective and could potentially result in re-freezing. Extended forecasts beyond Friday night are predicting temperatures will remain below freezing.
DPW staff will be in early to pretreat roads given the wet conditions and will continue to have staff continue to treat surfaces immediately once freezing conditions occur. We have 9 pieces of equipment with salters that will be covering all roads as needed mainly focusing on major arterial roads, hills, and parking lots. The buildings will be staffed with additional custodians to apply ice melt on building aprons and walkways.
This is a reminder regarding sidewalks: the Town is asking for help from all residents and businesses by salting their sidewalks. The Town does not have the resources to apply treatments to all sidewalks that it plows. The machines that we operate are inefficient for spreading salt or sand on sidewalks and must be refilled every 500ft – 800ft which is time consuming. Additionally, we have 4 out of 7 units operational at this time. The focus will be concentrated on sidewalks that abut public property and all resources will be devoted to applying treatments to those locations. Again, we ask for everyone’s patience as we complete this time consuming task.
Most importantly, if possible we are asking residents not to travel during these conditions. While we understand for some, this is not an option, we ask them to travel with the utmost caution and take their time making their way to their destination.
If you have any non-emergency concerns you are encouraged to use the Town’s reporting system SeeClickFix.