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Winter freeze-thaw creates ultimate challenge
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
milliken@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
Truck 44 Route Log Report
Document
GPS Route Log Report for Mahoning County Dump Truck 44 on February 4th and 5th, 2015.
The Mahoning County engineer and a county commissioner say road maintenance crews have been doing the best they can this winter to keep roads clear of ice and snow under extremely challenging weather conditions.
And it’s about to get worse, according to the National Weather Service.
The temperature in the Mahoning Valley will be in the single digits by 5 p.m. today and below zero tonight, said Will Kubina, an NWS meteorologist in Cleveland.
Except for a brief time Saturday when the high will be in the upper teens, it will be unseasonably cold for the next week, he said.
The high temperature between Saturday night and Sunday night will be 3 below zero with a low of minus 10, Kubina said.
Wind-chill values will reach as low as 30 below zero, he said.
“It’s going to be unseasonably cold,” he said. “The average high for this time of the year is in the upper 30s. We won’t see that for the next week. This will be the coldest stretch we’ve had this winter.”
Add to that, the NWS said there is a chance of snow each day through Sunday.
The weather could result in school closings.
This past Monday, many Mahoning Valley schools were either closed or opened one or two hours late as a precaution due to freezing rain and temperatures that plummeted overnight from 43 to 18 degrees and caused ice to form on roads and parking lots.
Since February began, alternate thawing and freezing have caused an immediate snow-and-ice removal challenge for local road crews, who, in the longer term, will have to fill a growing number of potholes as the weather permits.
Large, newly formed potholes became an obstacle course for motorists earlier this week on heavily traveled Canfield Road (U.S. Route 62) east of Mill Creek Park, sometimes causing them to go left of center to avoid having their tires hit the holes.
Winter’s FURY
With a winter blast ushering in this month, county road crews began their snow removal efforts at 6 a.m. Feb. 1, according to Patrick Ginnetti, county engineer.
The snow accumulation that day, followed by freezing rain and falling temperatures made it difficult to clear the roads, he explained.
“None of the roads were missed or skipped,” Ginnetti added.
The county engineer’s office is responsible for snow-and-ice control on 485 miles of county roads.
A resident of Detwiler Road in Beaver Township, who did not want to be interviewed or quoted, complained in an email to The Vindicator that Detwiler was plowed too late and “had turned to solid ice” Feb. 2.
New Buffalo Road, which runs nearly the entire length of that township, was in the same condition, and the portion of Tippecanoe Road south of Leffingwell Road was “almost undriveable” as of Feb. 3, he complained.
He added that state routes maintained by the Ohio Department of Transportation and township roads maintained by the township road department were plowed and in good condition.
Mahoning County has 528 miles of township roads, 175 miles of state routes, 59 miles of U.S. highways and 55 miles of interstate highways.
Besides state routes, ODOT performs snow-and-ice removal on U.S. and interstate highways.
A Boardman resident complained that Glenwood Avenue in Boardman had not been plowed by 9 a.m. Feb. 5 and was reduced by snow accumulation from four lanes to two or three lanes, with cars having difficulty passing a northbound school bus.
A reader also complained about treacherous conditions on South Avenue on Friday before this past weekend’s thaw.
The condition of Western Reserve Road also drew complaints last week.
On Friday morning, the only bare pavement on Kirk Road in Austintown between Meridian Road and state Route 46 was in the well-worn tire paths. That section of Kirk is a county road.
TOUGH WEATHER
“The weather’s been pretty tough out there lately,” observed county Commissioner David Ditzler at the Feb. 5 board meeting.
“It’s a difficult time and people have to be very aware of the conditions” of weather and the roads and drive carefully, he said.
“The engineer’s office is doing an amazing job trying to keep up,” he said.
“We had the worst conditions possible. We had a ton of snow, and then it warmed up to 40 degrees and then it melted and froze again,” Ditzler observed.
The engineer’s road crews have been “out continuously trying to keep up with it,” he said.
“No salt or slag, or anything’s going to accommodate the icy conditions,” he added.
Treacherous weather conditions and a multi-vehicle crash forced the closing of Interstate 80 in Mercer County, Pa., on Feb. 4, Ditzler recalled.
At the Feb. 5 meeting, the county commissioners authorized the emergency purchase of $50,000 to $100,000 worth of heavy anti-skid slag from Penn Ohio Sealing LLC of Lowellville.
Two weeks earlier, they authorized purchase of 1,000 tons of that material for $20,000 from the same source.
HARD TO TREAT
The county uses a mixture of three parts of slag to one part of salt, to which the liquid de-icing agent BEET HEET, which is made from sugar beets and molasses, is added, Ginnetti explained when the county made its first anti-skid slag purchase from Penn Ohio.
The slag allows motorists to get traction, and the salt and BEET HEET melt the ice, he added.
“When the salt prices went up, we were forced to seek alternative methods of de-icing the roads,” and to reduce salt use to stretch the salt supply, he said.
“The salt price for this year was $146.18 per ton, which was a 532 percent increase from last year,” when salt cost $27.50 per ton, he noted.
“It’s winter. The roads are going to be slick at times. Just slow it down a little bit and give yourself a little extra time and some safe distance [between vehicles]. It’s hard to notice black ice until the car starts sliding around,” the county engineer said.
“The freezing rain is one of my biggest concerns. It’s the hardest to treat. It’s hard to detect until it’s here,” Ginnetti said.
Contributor: David Skolnick