BUTLER, Pa. — Crews all across the region have been busy this winter with different weather over the last two months.
“The only big difference with this one will be strictly the significant snowfall that we will see, and we haven’t seen that in a while,” said Christina Gibbs with PennDOT District 10.
While the first snowflakes aren’t expected to start until late tomorrow night into Sunday, Gibbs said they’ve already started pre-treating roads all around Butler County and the region.
“We have the ability today to use this time, actually, when the sun is shining and get the crews out there to do pre-treatments and get those roads as ready as we can prior to the snow starting to fall,” Gibbs said.
PennDOT said Butler has 45 plow trucks and more than 80 crew members who are ready to put in long hours this weekend.
But they are urging everyone to have patience, because there’s a lot of snow expected to fall every hour.
“We have routes that take 4 hours to complete. So when they start a route and they get to the end, it’s been four hours. They’re calling for snow to drop at an inch to two inches per hour, which means by the time that plow truck gets back to the start of their route, you’re looking at anywhere from four to eight inches of fresh snow on a roadway again,” Gibbs said.
PennDOT has implemented a tier four restriction on the turnpike and interstates in the area for the storm this weekend. That means no commercial vehicles, buses, and cars or trucks towing trailers will be able to access the highways.
“Please stay home,” Gibbs said. “Let us be out there. Let us have the ability to have access to all of the roads, get things cleaned off, and do what we need to do and keep everyone as safe as we can.”
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