Clearing the way: Plow trucks hit the road as the first snow of the season falls

MAT-SU — White stuff began to fall from the sky early Sunday morning and continued on through Monday night. Some areas that were hit hard by the first winter storm of the year accumulated as much as eight inches as of Monday evening, but some areas of the Valley got only a light dusting. Before any of the over 100,000 Valley residents head out to start their day, truck drivers begin to push plows over roads in each of the Mat-Su Borough’s 16 different Road Service Areas.

“It looks like winter came to the Palmer area today,” Karl Kopperud said.

Kopperud has been driving plows since the 1980s and has been working with Norse Alaska since 2012. He has seen all of the different types of snow imaginable, wet snow, dry snow, thick snow, and freezing rain, and he has cleared the roads of the accumulated precipitation to make it safe for Valley motorists.

Kopperud had to change his game plan with the inclement weather. He monitors up to three different weather forecasts daily to get the full picture of what the plows will be facing before the rest of the drivers. Most importantly, Kopperud’s crew must make the roads drivable before the school buses disperse to pick up school children.

“It was pretty typical for what we’ve done in the past. That was to hit our pavement and our bus routes, mainly to make sure kids got to school,” Kopperud said. “We decided to put a bigger plow on just in case. The problem with plowing gravel roads you can’t scrape them because the ground underneath is thawed. You could scrape all the finish material off the road and our guys have got to go slower.”

Norse Alaska is one of the two major contractors who clean roads throughout the Mat-Su. The areas that were hit hardest by the fluffy falling white stuff were mostly serviced by Norse Alaska. The Butte RSA up through Sutton and all the way to Chickaloon were all plowed by Norse trucks this morning, well before the sun came up.

“All of those, with this particular snow, all of those have been definitely hit hard,” Kopperud said.

Kopperud told his crew of experienced plow drivers to exercise extreme caution this morning, and extends that to the school children. He suggests that students wear reflective clothing at the bus stop so that plow drivers can see them ahead of time and avoid spraying the students with snow. Plow drivers first clean the most important roads, or arteries, and extend out into secondary and tertiary roads later. Getting the kids to school safely is their first priority. Bus drivers share this same goal, but act on the goal in a different fashion.

“We don’t hire people that we don’t have confidence in. If they’re out behind the wheel, we have every bit of confidence in them,” said Andrew Good, Lead Dispatcher for First Student.

“All of our students are safely home or soon to be safely home,” Good said as of 5 p.m. on Monday.

Good suggests that parents download the ‘Where’s my bus?’ app to keep track of where buses are exactly on their way to pick up and drop off Valley students. Good also stressed that parents need to dress their children appropriately for the winter weather.

“This particular snow caught everybody off guard expecting 3-5 inches,” Good said.

Good said that several buses were required to use their chains and that impassable accidents forced some buses to take alternate routes. Good praised the plow drivers, as he himself used to drive the treacherous Clark-Wolverine Road and often followed plow trucks on the way to pick up students. Good also emphasized that parents are active in listening to the radio or checking the Mat-Su Borough School District Website for possible school closures. However intimidating the winter weather can be in South Central Alaska, buses are only called off in dire circumstances. With the sheer size of the MSBSD, rarely does weather affect every school in the district in such a dangerous manner that all of the buses deem the roads unsafe to travel.

“Snow removal begins when the snow depth reaches 4 inches. A 4-inch snowfall normally takes a maximum of 48 hours to complete snow removal after snowfall stops. Heavier snowfalls will take longer. The general priorities for snow removal will be school bus routes first, primary collector roads second, and secondary roads and subdivision roads third. Currently, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough has over 1,100 miles of roads to maintain,” reads the Mat-Su Borough website’s section on plowing.

While the borough subcontracts all of their roads out, the city of Palmer maintains their own roads. A crew of seven Department of Public Works employees hit the streets at 3:30 a.m. to ensure road safety in the Palmer city limits.

Nineteen lane miles of runways and taxiways must be plowed, 1,400,000 square feet of parking aprons, and 59 lane miles of roads both gravel and paved must be cleared of snow by the small crew. The city operates with three road graders, a sanding truck with a belly blade, and smaller plows mounted on three-quarter ton pickup trucks. Two groups of city employees begin clearing sidewalks throughout the walkable areas of Palmer like the library. Palmer’s fleet of plow trucks has no shiny new toys, but mostly are older vehicles, including one that broke down today.

“Because it’s continued to snow all day, the guys will be right back in here tomorrow morning,” Palmer Director of Public Works Chris Nall said. “It’s pretty much the same strategy whether it’s heavy wet snow, or white fluffy dry snow. It’s all the same thing as far as getting it off the roads and picking it up.”

While picking up the existing snow is the first priority, the people who plow like Kopperud are watching the forecasts carefully to see what’s coming next. With freezing rain and icy conditions, they are more likely to send out sanding trucks along with their plows. Kopperud believes that this first snow will only be here for a little while. With warmer temperatures in the forecast, Valley drivers could be seeing the worst of the winter roads on Monday.