Winter storm warning Ohio ODOT preparations

CLEVELAND (WJW)– The Ohio Department of Transportation is already warning drivers to plan for hazardous travel on Wednesday and Thursday, while Cleveland’s mayor is calling for patience as the city implements a new snow removal plan.

Meanwhile, residents are stocking up on winter supplies, emptying many store shelves across Northeast Ohio. Some cities have already announced snow parking bans starting Wednesday.

“We are working on the trucks right now in garages to make sure that those things are ready,” said Amanda McFarland, the Northeast Ohio spokesperson for ODOT.

ODOT crews are getting plow trucks, and themselves, ready for what could be some long, tough hours by mid-week.

“In this case, the storm might come in as rain first, and so that would eliminate our opportunity to pre-treat, so we’ll just have to see where that line ends up in the forecast before we can make any of those final decisions,” McFarland said.

McFarland said whether Northeast Ohio sees rain, ice, snow or a combination will also determine whether putting salt on the highways will be effective.

“They’ll probably be doing more pushing of snow than putting down salt because they’re gonna be passing through their routes so frequently they would just be pushing that salt right over into the ditch, so they’ll still be salting, but maybe not as heavily until the snow slows down,” she said.

Last week, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb outlined a new snow removal plan to clear city streets.  It includes adding twenty new trucks and drivers to the current fleet to help avoid a catastrophe like the storm that crippled the city two weeks ago.  But that won’t happen right away.

“Those 20 trucks won’t happen overnight, right, so they will not be here by Wednesday’s snow event,” Bibb said.

“You’ll see some announcements from my office tomorrow about greater coordination between the city, RTA, our CDC, Downtown Cleveland Alliance and our health care organizations to make sure we’re using every resource and asset that we can to keep our main streets plowed, keep our secondary streets plowed and keep our residential streets plowed,” the mayor said.

“The icier it’s threatening, the better it is for us,” said Carter Welo, owner of South Euclid True Value Hardware store on Mayfield Road.

Welo said winter supplies have been flying off shelves as quickly as he can stock them.

“Snow shovels, rock salt, ice melter,” he explained.

Welo said he often overstocks on winter supplies. Several of the large retailers we spoke to told us their shelves were bare as people buy up items for the storm.

“When a lot of people run out of it, we’ll always have it and I’ll tell them, we’ll have it until April, if we need it ‘til April,” he said.

One big box retailer told FOX 8 they are getting an emergency shipment of winter supplies on Thursday.

As far as the roads, both the city and ODOT are asking for people to be patient and stay off the roads, if possible.

ODOT also reminds drivers not to “crowd the plow.” Officials said, as of Monday, there have been 17 accidents involving ODOT snow plows so far this year.