County Officials Plan for Snow, Hope for No Repeat of Last Winter

If this winter is anything like the last, county road crews will again find themselves digging neighborhood streets out of mountains of snow.

But there is less likelihood that they will find themselves lost.

Montgomery County plans to equip snow plow drivers with portable global positioning systems to help them navigate new or unfamiliar routes.

"We're able to download a snow plow route into a TomTom," Keith Compton, chief of the county's Division of Highway Services, told about 180 people at the county's Snow Summit 2010-2011 on Thursday in Rockville. The audience included contract snowplow drivers and employees from county agencies with a role in snow removal.

The cost of using the portable GPS devices is minimal compared to other technologies such as Automatic Vehicle Location systems — a GPS-based way to track vehicles that is used by some delivery services and on emergency vehicles, Compton said.

"That's brilliant," Donnie Whitmeyer said of the GPS technology. Whitmeyer's Grey Goose Farm in Gaithersburg contracts with the county for 11 trucks and two loaders. They might plow six or seven routes during any given storm.

"The route's always changing," he said.

Montgomery County's snow plowing plan is designed to put every one of the county's nearly 1 million residents within a half-mile of a plowed road within a certain period of time after a storm passes through the region, Compton said.

But technology is only so helpful once the snow falls. And when it falls like it did last winter — including 25.5 inches in Rockville on Feb. 5-6 — the county moves from a snow plowing operation to a snow removal operation.

"The snow plows push, they don't lift," Compton said.

County Executive Isiah Leggett said that he is hopeful the county will not see another winter of record snowfall.

The county spent close to $17 million on snow cleanup last winter, said Leggett (D) who addressed the summit.

"The normal budget for that is probably about $15 million a year," he said. "So hopefully we will be in a better position because the challenges probably will not be as great."

"But whatever the challenge is as it relates to safety, when it relates to snow and ice, we cannot afford not to respond," Leggett said. "And I will respond and use the resources at our disposal and get the snow and ice off the street."

Those resources include 200 county employees, 180 contract personnel, 175 pieces of equipment and 35,500 tons of salt and sand.

Last year, the county contracted out for another 900 pieces of equipment during the back-to-back blizzards in February.

This year, Leggett is looking for help from another source: The state of Maryland.

"One of the things that I think we can improve on is that the response of the state needs to match the response of the local communities," Leggett said.

At times last winter state roads were not plowed as quickly as county roads.

"The average citizen does not make a distinction," Leggett said. "So I will receive a call whether it's a local municipality, a state road, or what have you. They're going to call the county executive and say 'I've got a problem.'"

On Wednesday morning, the county held a training exercise with new drivers and snow removal equipment out on county roads. The mock operation highlighted changes in routes and simulated what Department of Transportation personnel in the county's operation center would do during a real storm.

Winter storm planning is year-round. In April, county transportation officials learned about the latest technology at the annual American Public Works Association's North American Snow Conference in Omaha, NE.

"The new buzzword for this year is pavement forecasting," Compton said.

That includes tracking the temperature of pavement and the dew point to determine whether there is enough moisture to create frost or black ice.

If hazardous conditions are possible, crews can pre-treat roads using anti-icing or de-icing materials such as a salt brine that was piloted last winter and that will be used again this winter to pre-treat 1,000 miles of road.

Part of the county's focus will be "increased real-time forecasting" that uses local forecasts, satellite forecasts and on-the-ground monitoring of weather and conditions, Compton said.

The county is also using in-the-ground technology in the form of six Road Weather Information Systems that include sensors in travel lanes and that can track pavement temperatures, chemical compositions and moisture.

While lessons were learned during the historic winter of 2009-2010, officials said that the amount of snow removal required made it difficult at times to assess performance.

"How do you debrief after clearing eight feet of snow using 1,000 pieces of equipment when you've never done it before?" Compton said.

Contractors who didn't perform well last year "aren't here this year," Compton said.

As for those who are returning, "We're going to give ourselves an 'A' for last year," he said.

Snow's Over, Folks

After a storm, the type of snow — be it heavy and wet or light and powdery, the temperature and wind conditions can affect how quickly road crews are able to plow and/or treat roads. Here are estimates of how quickly road crews will make at least one pass of all  4,726 miles of county roads. 

Source: Montgomery County Department of Transportation, Division of Highway Services