Bixby, Broken Arrow, Owasso City Crews Prepare For Winter Weather

Winter weather preparations are happening all over Green Country Tuesday night.

Bixby, Broken Arrow, and Owasso crews have been getting ready for snow and ice all day. Each city has its own game plan. Owasso started pre-treating earlier today and will continue through Wednesday, Bixby and Broken Arrow, won’t hit the roads until tonight.

Preparing for winter weather is not a task crews in Oklahoma take lightly. Jennifer Rush says the City of Bixby has outfitted all of their trucks with plows for the storm.

"Our plan is if it is not ice, we are going to do some pretreatments around 11 and then we will activate the plows around 2 am depending on the weather and get sand out on the roads as well," said Rush.

The Broken Arrow Director of Streets and Stormwater Rocky Henkel says they have 16 people working per shift, a crew of 8 people on stand by and more than a dozen trucks ready for snow and ice.

"We will have a shift come in at midnight, work a 12 hour shift. We anticipate there being freezing rain and sleet in the early morning hours so our crew will put down, pretreat our roads….secondary roads and bridges and then once the precipitation turns over into snow, once it starts to accumulate, we will go into plowing operations," said Henkel.

And it is not just street crews getting ready, police and fire departments, have spent the day making sure they have the gear they need to get to emergency calls safely and quickly. Broken Arrow Assistant Fire Chief Mark Steward says the snow can make it tougher to get around, so they may have to call in more people to help.

"We are going to make that call first thing in the morning, we are watching the weather and will make that judgment call first thing in the morning," said Steward.