CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Patrick Morrisey says state residents should continue to avoid unnecessary travel.
“Please stay at home. Please stay off the roads, only go out if you have to,” Morrisey said at a Monday media briefing. “There are a lot of people who may see the snow has come to an end and want to get out but the road conditions are still slippery and when you’re out on the roads it’s more difficult for highways teams to do their work.”
Morrisey said state workers were told Monday to make it to work if they could safely but it was also acceptable to stay at home and work remotely.
State Division of Highways spokesman Brent Walker said crews made progress over the weekend but Monday’s additional snow and high temperatures in the teens continued to create challenges.
“With this ice and the lower temperatures, we’ve had to change gears a bit,” Walker said. “We’re still using brine, salt mix, those types of things but in the lower temperatures salt’s effectiveness is reduced. So we are just putting more down to get the same effect.”
Walker said DOH drivers are mainly on primary roads but were also beginning to hit secondary roads Monday.
“Our drivers have been instructed when they are going back to a facility to get salt or other resources, where they can they need to treat and they need to plow,” he said.
DOH crews are working 12-hour shifts 24-hours a day.
Walker said this week’s frigid temperatures will make the DOH’s efforts more difficult.
“Everything is reduced, the effectiveness of every resource we have,” he said.
Walker said the state’s highways are “safe for cautious travel.”
Air travel
The storm, which covered more than 2,000 miles, will likely impact air travel for a few more days.
West Virginia International Yeager Airport Executive Director Dominique Ranieri said all flights at CRW were cancelled Sunday but the airlines were deicing planes for Monday afternoon flights.
She said during an appearance Monday on MetroNews “Talkline” it’s better to check ahead with your airline about flights from Charleston and in connecting cities.
Ranieri said airport crews will work hard to this week to keep ice off the runway.
“We can handle snow all day, that’s easy, we know how to move a lot of it but just not much we can do about ice,” Ranieri said. “We can’t salt it because that would of course damage aircraft engines but our team has been focused on keeping the pavement extremely dry and not giving water the chance for it to freeze over the runway.”
Ranieri said crews inside would be working to make sure infrastructure isn’t damaged by sub-zero temperatures.
“We have pipes like your home does. We start to monitor those to make sure we’re not going to have any issues with any freezing pipes that would effect our passengers here in the terminal building,” Ranieri said.
She added it’s also important to keep airport crews safe in the bitter cold.
Federal Disaster Declaration
The state received a federal declaration from President Donald Trump before the storm hit on Saturday.
Gov. Morrisey said Monday the state hasn’t had to call upon FEMA yet for assistance.
“This is meant as a quick coordination opportunity and so we thought, not knowing the scope of the weather, it was good to coordinate,” Morrisey said.