Storms Get Their Own Attack Strategies

COLORADO SPRINGS – Just as each storm has its own characterisitics, each gets its own attack strategy.

Colorado springs got hit with a quadruple whammy with this latest storm. Time of day, rush hour, sunset, temperatures falling; all of it added up to a huge mess for street crews.

It doesn’t matter who you talk to the city or the state, it was a challenge all the way around. Not only did the snow start falling right at rush hour, but it was falling fast,and then within 90-minutes…the sun went down and the streets got slick.

Here in town and on the highways… As Gary Heller with the Colorado Department of Transportation told me, “normally we try to get out there when the snow first starts falling and the roads start getting wet and the temperaturestarts dropping.”

Also, when I spoke with Ken Winckler, the Operations Manager with the City of Colorado Springs Street Division, he told me pretty much thesame thing.The challenges are many.

When I asked himto pick out what he believed were the worst areas in the city; he couldn’t do it, he said they were all nasty, “it was pretty much city wide yesterday. That was probably one of the few times it hit the south just about as bad as it did the north. It really wasn’t any different at all.”

Winckler went on to say he believes that the most challenging intersections in the city are always the ones where a hill leads up to the light.