Preparing For Oklahoma's Next Winter Storm

Tulsa city road crews have 9,000 tons of salt and sand ready for Tulsa streets, and 50 spreaders on standby. <br/><br/>PSO is in its war room, already lining up out-of-state repair crews in case the worst

Thursday, January 11th 2007, 9:56 am

By: News On 6

Tulsa city road crews have 9,000 tons of salt and sand ready for Tulsa streets, and 50 spreaders on standby.

PSO is in its war room, already lining up out-of-state repair crews in case the worst hits. But are you storm ready?

News on 6 anchor Terry Hood has your checklist. Gardening Guru Charlie Cohlmia says your outdoor plants should be fine - as long as they get plenty of water "before" the storm. He says the ice actually insulates them from getting too cold.

For trees, Cohlmia says don't go out to shake the ice off. That just does more harm than good. If you have a low hanging branch you're worried might snap, Cohlmia recommends propping it up with a 2-by-4.

Broken tree limbs are the biggest problem the power company is worried about in this storm. Ice on limbs and power lines could cause widespread outages. You should have alternate sources of heat and light on hand, in case you lose electricity. Some may want to go as far as buying a generator.

Right now, hardware stores like Lowe's have plenty on hand. Juston Vunetich: "Once the storm comes and we'll be out of power for more than a day, that's when we'll see the push on generators. You won't see that run until they're out of power, and it's going to go beyond a day or so, two days, three days, that's when you'll see people come in to buy the generators."

In fact, the Lowe's stores in Tulsa have enough generators, that they've been shipping them to another location in Ponca City that are running low.