The Cerro Gordo County Engineer’s Office is asking rural residents to help keep county and gravel roads safe in the aftermath of this weekend’s storm. Many people with long driveways will push the show out of their drive and out onto a rural road, but County Engineer Mary Kelly says that’s likely to create a driving hazard for other motorists.
Kelly says pushing snow across the roadway can cause windrows that sometimes freeze, making for very rough and slick driving conditions. It’s hard on vehicles, and could even make you go off the roadway. The extra snow can also contribute to drifting, and on the right-of-way it’s a traffic hazard. Kelly says that the windrows left in the roadway can also be dangerous for snowplows to drive over.
Kelly says that people with a long rural drive should try to keep the snow on their own property, and out of the right-of-way. She says they’d plowed every hard-surface road in the country by the Monday morning after the storm, even though the road crews face daunting obstacles.
Kelly says they’re all working together to get it done, and she asks the public to be patient — with power out, not all the shops are operating and some plows are in need of repair, but Kelly says they’re working to finish all the road clearing the best they can. If you have any questions about snow removal, your county engineer’s office has information to answer them.