Crews work to clear roads before 2nd round of snow

JACKSON, Tenn. — Crews have been clearing roads almost non-stop since snow started falling.

Now they’re trying to make some progress before the next round arrives on Wednesday.

Four inches of snow caused havoc across West Tennessee roads, but crews are trying to get it cleaned up as fast as they can.

“We made some progress. We divided into five zones,” said Johnny Weddle, superintendent of the City of Jackson Streets Department.

“We have all of our crews back out going through those roads, making sure we are getting them cleared and opened,” said Bart Walls, superintendent of the Madison County Highway Department.

“Some of our crews moved to the secondary routes, 412, 45, Highland, and different areas like that,” said Nichole Lawrence, the community relations officer for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

“I just got off the interstate. There’s still snow and ice on it, but they are doing a good job of making it more passable and more safe. I was just on 45 in Madison County. It was better than it was yesterday. I actually had some issues yesterday on 45,” said Sgt. Jena Eubanks with the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

They say their ally in this effort is the sunshine.

“The temperatures are low, so it won’t make the temperature raise much, but it will help that precipitation and that accumulation on our highways,” Lawrence said.

But their enemy might just be you.

These crews aren’t just wanting you to stay off the roads for your own safety. You being on the road creates problems for them.

Your tires melt the snow and that turns to ice. Plus when you’re on the roads, it creates traffic for their trucks.

“Sometimes we have to cut our power off when we meet a car to keep from damaging the vehicles and stuff like that, so that kind of hurts us there,” Weddle said.

And there are worries for Wednesday, with more snow on the way.

“We have a limited amount of salt on hand, so we are monitoring the amount of salt we’re putting out and trying to make sure we keep some on hand to be able to address anything that comes down tomorrow or later this week,” Walls said.

“If we do as much as we can now, we won’t have as much Wednesday and Thursday to push off,” Lawrence said. “So we’re really trying to get as much now taken care of as we can.”

The streets department also has a request for business owners: If you are clearing snow in your parking lot, please don’t pile the snow in the streets.

It makes it harder for the snow plow trucks to clear the roads.