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Buffalo's response to the latest round of snow

The Buffalo Department of Public Works commissioner discussed snow removal strategies on Wednesday.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The City of Buffalo Department of Public Works Commissioner told 2 On Your Side on Wednesday that one of the big things the city is focused on this storm is communication.

That's why they sent out two BuffAlert texts Wednesday morning.

"In kind of our after approach and all the meetings we've had since then, you know, the next snow event, not necessarily a snow storm or a blizzard, but the next snow event, we just wanted to make sure that we were communicating ahead of time," Buffalo DPW Commissioner Nathan Marton said.

"You know, kind of the best information that we can get, as often as it made sense and needed. So in this case, (Wednesday) morning, we knew weather was going to be an issue, and driving conditions were going to be an issue."

This is a pretty standard snow storm for Buffalo, and the city knows how to shift its resources as it goes from snow to rain and then back to snow Wednesday night. The crews have been out all day, since the snow started early Wednesday morning, pre-salting and salting the roads and plowing. 

The DPW Commissioner said Wednesday afternoon that in a lot of places, the roads are clear and the crews are keeping up with the snow. 

"The snow is going to change, and it's going to increase in the next few hours, so we'll be on top of that, maybe shift to more of a plowing mechanism if needed on that, and then monitor when it switches to rain," Marton said.

"But then we've got a period of time between the snow and the rain where it could get a little slippery, so we'll be on top of that and track that as well, and then follow it through overnight. It will be rain for a period of time overnight, and then we'll pick a little bit more snow up in the morning too, so it's something we're going to track as the forecast, and as the storm then kind of changes throughout the day and evening and tomorrow morning, we'll monitor it, we'll check it, we'll track it, and we'll change, and move with it."

Since we aren't getting so much snow that the city's crews can't keep up with it, they are not using private contractors this time around.

"This snowfall isn't anything where we would see a real need for mutual aid, or any kind of conversations related to those," Marton said. "Maintaining county roads, the state's maintaining their roads seamlessly, flawlessly, as they normally would, and then we'll maintain ours, so this kind of event, I think we'll all operate in the variations that we're used to, and those blend together typically without any impact on the community."

You can sign up for BuffAlert texts here by following the directions in our story from February of 2022.

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