First Furious Flurries

CELINA - Mercer County encountered its first accumulating snowfall of the 2020-2021 winter, with between 11/2 and 2 inches piling up on the ground by 4 p.m. Monday.

A bit more of the white stuff might have accumulated in the northeast area, Mercer County Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Robbins added.

The Mercer County engineer's fleet of 13 plows was deployed at about noon Monday to lay down a salt mix, operations manager Brad Laffin said.

"We did go out today and (did) what we would consider a pre-treat, put down some material hoping that that will form a layer of brine on the roads that will maybe (prevent) slick spots as darkness starts to fall and temperatures drop," he said.

The crews don't normally do a whole lot of pre-treatment, Laffin noted.

"We are a little bit more reactive than proactive," he said. "ODOT, at the state level, they're much more proactive. They're trying to get out there a little bit more ahead of the storm, and we, a lot of time, we've got little tighter budgets to work with, but we did go out today."

The county has a stockpile of about 2,500 tons of raw salt, Laffin said. More salt will be hauled in as needed as the winter season progresses. To stretch out the salt supplies and reduce costs, county crews apply a mix of salt and grit to the roads.

"We mix our salt at a one-to-one ratio with what we call No. 9. It's like a real fine pea gravel from the local stone quarry," he said. "We do supply roughly six to seven out of the 14 townships in the county. They come here and purchase it. Some of them purchase straight salt, some of them purchase the mixed material from us."

The engineer's office is responsible for clearing roughly 385 miles of county roads. The 13 snowplow routes range between 32 to 33 miles one way and 64 to 66 miles for both lanes of traffic, Laffin pointed out.

The salt mix is dispersed via a spreader on the back of the trucks, he said.

"Some of them are electronically controlled to where they can actually set the exact amount of pounds that we want to place per mile. A few of the older trucks don't have that newer technology yet," Laffin said.

The engineer's office during the 2019-2020 winter season racked up $293,087 in total costs on snow and ice control over 35 days, according to county engineer Jim Wiechart. That figure includes equipment, labor and materials.

The engineer's office spent $108,851 on materials during the 2019-2020 winter season - 1,300.25 tons of salt costing $97,149 and 1,300 tons of grit costing $11,702, per Wiechart's report.

On the labor side, the engineer's office expended 1,566 regular hours and 841.50 overtime hours on snow and ice control during the 2019-2020 winter season.

Each winter's cost is obviously based on the cost of materials and the amount of precipitation each year.

Breaking down the cost further, Wiechart in a report pegged the average cost of snow and ice control at $759.97 per mile in 2019-2020, $758.47 per mile in 2018-2019, $699.21 per mile in 2017-2018, $431.49 per mile in 2016-2017, $399.54 per mile in 2015-2016 and $950.18 per mile in 2014-2015.

What's in store for this winter season? The Farmers' Almanac forecasts "cold winter with normal to below-normal temperatures in areas from the Great Lakes and Midwest, westward through the Northern and Central Plains, and Rockies."

Robbins said the county likely can expect "near normal temperatures and a little wetter than normal."