DeKalb County, municipalities prepare for winter storm ahead of Christmas weekend

DeKALB – DeKalb County, the city of DeKalb and other local municipalities are preparing for winter weather that could produce whiteout conditions between Thursday and Saturday, wreaking havoc on holiday travel plans.

A winter storm watch will be in effect for DeKalb, Kane, Ogle, Lee, McHenry, La Salle, Grundy, Livingston, Boone and Winnebago counties starting at 9 a.m. Thursday through 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.

Wind gusts exceeding 55 miles per hour are anticipated with the storm, making power outages in the area a possibility.

Snow is expected to begin falling Thursday morning and become steadily heavier throughout Thursday afternoon. Dangerous blizzard-like conditions could develop Thursday night and continue into Friday, with wind chills as low as 20 below zero.

Snowfall is expected to slow on Saturday, but the wind and single digit temperatures will stick around through Christmas Day on Sunday.

Andy Raih, director of streets and facilities for the city of DeKalb, said the city’s Street Operations Division is prepared for the weather.

“We have a full staff ready, and we have plenty of salt and chemical in stock,” Raih said. “In general, our department will be in at the onset of the storm, and we will be present until everything is over.”

The city of DeKalb has approximately 344 lane miles of roadway that it maintains, and Raih said DeKalb’s road division intends to modify its plan according to the weather conditions as needed.

“With this particular storm, depending on when the temperatures dive off mixed with wind and during the actual event, if it upgrades towards blizzard conditions, we will not be spreading a lot of salt because it doesn’t do a lot of good,” Raih said. “In heavy winds, it actually causes more trouble. But we do have enough salt obviously, if that’s the case at the end the storm during final cleanup, to get roads get back in a good condition.”

The plan of attack in the village of Malta is to wait until there’s about 2 or 3 inches of snow on the ground before sending snowplow crews out.

“We basically clear off the main artery streets, which are our north and south roads, and then we’ll hit our secondary east-west roads,” said Scott Kaelin, an employee for the village of Malta’s Maintenance Department’s Streets Division.

Once the streets have been cleared, the snowplow crews in Malta will wait until a couple more inches fall before heading back out to plow, Kaelin said.

“We’ll probably go out probably four or five times before this is all said and done, maybe even more,” he said.

Bud Forrer, superintendent of the village of Shabbona’s Public Works Department, said his crews will also wait until 2 or 3 inches are on the roads before they start plowing.

“It depends on how long the snow is going to go,” Forrer said. “We want to make sure that we get it before it gets treated.”

Nathan Schwartz, DeKalb County engineer and head of the county’s Highway Department, said whether it’s the first snowstorm of the year or the last, his department always prepares by making sure all of its trucks and plows “are ready to go.”

Depending on the road conditions, Schwartz said it could take his department three or more hours to do a complete route throughout the county.

“And then we’re going to go back and start that route over again,” Schwartz said. “If we were to spread, spread, spread salt on the road and then just plow it right back off again, that may not be the most efficient way.”

The DeKalb County Highway Department does not use anything other than salt to treat the roads. Long stretches of straight highways are less likely to get salt treatment, but intersections are often doused with a heavier amount of salt no matter the wind conditions because the department wants to address safety concerns where accidents are most likely to happen, Schwartz said.

Schwartz said this week’s winter weather event is a little bit more notable because it’s the first significant snowstorm of the season.

“So whenever we have a big snow storm in the middle of winter people are kind of used to it, usually,” he said. “But the first significant storm when you might get snow-packed roads or icy roads, people are used to driving at a little bit higher speeds for the past few months so sometimes people kind of lose control of their vehicles just because they’re not slowing down enough for the pavement conditions.”