WINTER ARRIVES EARLY
The season’s first significant snowfall hit parts of the region Tuesday
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y >> Old Man Winter hit the area Tuesday with the season’s first significant snowfall, including up to five inches of heavy wet slush that downed trees and power lines in northern Saratoga County’s Sacandaga region.
The weight of snow on leaves, which are late in falling, brought down trees on Stony Creek Road in Hadley.
“We’re still doing cleanup,” said county Public Works Commissioner Keith R. Manz, at noontime Tuesday. “We’ll probably be out there tomorrow, too.”
Only seven of the county’s 23 road maintenance beats were called out to plow, sand or salt highways, as snow in central and southern parts of the county quickly melted on road surfaces.
Town of Wilton Highway Superintendent Kirklin D. Woodcock said, “We plowed Corinth Mountain Road and all the main roads. Other than that we lucked out pretty good.”
Across New York, National Grid reported 21 active power
outages from Buffalo to the Capital Region that affected a combined 1,337 customers. The outage closest to Saratoga Springs was in Glens Falls, where fewer than 50 customers were without electricity.
While it didn’t take long to clear the snow, the storm didn’t help local highway departments whose budgets are already stretched thin from last winter, which lasted well into April.
Budgets are for an entire calendar year from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, and sometimes it costs almost as much to treat roads and pay overtime labor costs for small nuisance storms as a large snowfall.
“Unfortunately it’s an early start to winter,” said Walter Barss, Greenfield highway superintendent. “We didn’t need this at all after last year’s budget killer.”
On average, his department goes through about 4,000 tons of salt per year. But the department already used about 5,500 tons since Jan. 1 and there’s still six weeks to go in 2018.
“Hopefully it stays pretty clear the rest of the way,” Barss said. “Otherwise we’re going to be short and we’ll have to find reserves to buy more salt.”
The forecast calls for mostly sunny skies Wednesday and Thursday, but an 80 percent chance of snow Thursday night turning to snow and rain all day Friday, into Friday evening.
Tuesday’s storm caused headaches because it snowed, turned to rain and then snowed again, so crews had to go back out and clear roads a second time, he said.
“I wish it would only snow from West Mountain north,” Barss said. “Let the skiers have it.”