One week ago we were closing roads and interstate highways because of the unstoppable blizzard. Today it’s melting away before our eyes, even though Woodbury County Superintendent of Roads Roger Milligan says his crews haven’t finished opening some of the roads blocked by snow. He says schoolbuses will have to run only on the hard-surface roads and pick up people who’ve made their way to the blacktop, as there’s no way they’ll be able to clear every road by the time it’s supposed to get to sixty degrees.
That much snow, and all the water it contains, will create a new problem…flooding in many of those rural areas. If it gets warm, and quits freezing at night, none of his agency’s heavy equipment can get into those areas, and with roads turning to mud he says they’ll just make it worse. The county roads are just being finished up, and with some of the rural roads still impassable, Milligan says he’d rather see the weather stay around freezing.
He’d settle for 33 degrees or so in the daytime, and down around ten at night, so they’ll have the opportunity to repair some of the wet, muddy areas. "It’d freeze back up, and you could [put] gravel on top of em." Temperatures are forecast to warm now through the middle of next week.