NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WIVB)- Driving conditions in Niagara County were tricky Monday as lake effect snow caused whiteouts in places.
The snow fell quickly in Lockport during the afternoon. It picked up around 7:00 p.m. and covered Transit Road. News 4 crews saw at least half a dozen snow plows clearing the roads in Niagara County.
North Tonawanda Department of Public Works started treating roads at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday and continued 24 hour shifts through Monday night. The city saw about six inches of snowfall.
Eight crews were on the road on Sunday but by Monday night there was only one drift plow out in the city. The drift plow focused on north to south roads like River Road, where snow drifts were a problem.
“You want to make sure traffic can get through your community so your main roads have to stay open,” said Bradley Rowles, the superintendent with North Tonawanda DPW. “The second thing you do is your schools. Now today we really didn’t have to focus on that because buses weren’t out, kids weren’t standing on street corners so this was really a win-win.”
The crews used close to 800 tons of salt by Monday night. Salt is usually only effective down to about 20 degrees so they used treated salt, which works down to zero degrees.
“One of the products I use is a magnesium chloride which we spray on the salt,” said Rowles. “It works really well in really cold temperatures and that’s paid off well in this storm. It has a couple of benefits to it. We talk about bounce and scatter and what that means is when our spreader dumps our salt to the ground, if it flies all the way to the curb it doesn’t do any good so we want to make it sticks by putting liquid to it.”
North Tonawanda will get a shipment of about 500 tons of salt on Monday to replenish what it used in this storm.
