As a major winter storm bares down on West Virginia, the Department of Transportation is becoming as ready as possible for whatever Mother Nature delivers.
“We’re certainly planning on a pretty fair amount of accumulation,” said Transportation Spokesman Brent Walker. “We’ve met with folks from the National Weather Service. We’ve had our maintenance crews together and we’re all just gearing up.”
Typically during lulls between winter events the DOH uses their time to make repairs to equipment. However, any snowplow in the shop today become top priority so it’s back on the road by tonight when the worst of the weather hits.
Forecasters predicted several inches of accumulation across northern West Virginia, a little higher accumulation in the mountains, and the eastern mountains could see over a foot in the next two to three days. Walker says those roads like I-68 are always problematic, but the best advice they can give to motorists is to stay off of them when the weather starts to take a turn for the worst.
“When our road crews are out there and it’s coming down hard, stay off the roads,” he said. “Invariably we have cars and trucks that feel like they can press on, but end up getting stuck. Then what is a road treatment mission becomes a rescue mission and everything comes to a standstill.”