With Greene County encountering one of the heaviest snowfall winters on record, County Engineer Wade Weiss says their melting products have taken a large hit this winter.

He states that every year, they try to plan ahead of how much salt to purchase from their supplier in Kansas, but that this year was recorded in the top ten on record for the snowiest winter and he adds that their materials are down.

“Did not really expect this as far as how much material has been put down I think that people are a little surprised at how much snow we’ve actually gotten this year.  We’re down to probably a quarter of what we would have normally supplied for the winter.  So we’re still in okay shape, we’re going to make it through this (winter).  But it’s just looking towards next winter, I guess is what we’re contemplating how we’re going to handle that.”

This winter has caused other issues too with early snowfall and sleeting to use more melting products than normal and on the gravel roads, Weiss notes they applied new gravel this past summer and due to the dry conditions, most of the gravel has been pushed to the intersections prior to when winter started.

Normally, their mixture is one-third salt and two-thirds sand to stretch the salt out so it’ll last longer and they typically add about one gallon of sodium chloride to the mixture on days where ice is prevalent on the roads.