County nears finish line of road clearing
Jan. 16—OTTUMWA — If you ask anyone in the Wapello County Secondary Roads Department, they'll say the end is near.
And, when it comes to the work of clearing snow from twin snowstorms over a handful of days, it was a much-appreciated effort.
During Tuesday's board of supervisors meeting at the courthouse, supervisor Brian Morgan commended the department, emergency management and other entities for the work they've put in during what turned out to be a historic week of events.
According to National Weather Service data, the weather station at Ottumwa Regional Airport reported 27.1 inches of snow from Jan. 6-13. Craig Cogil, a senior forecaster with the NWS in Des Moines, said in an email to The Courier that the snowfall over that stretch easily broke the record of 16 inches set twice in the winter of 1977-78.
"This will go down as the snowiest January on record in Ottumwa," he said. "And we still have just under half of the month left, and more snow may occur."
The previous January record was 21.1 inches set in 2019.
Yet, the rural areas of the county, where drifts can be taller than adults, have been where the snow presence has been felt most, not only on residents, but also those responsible for clearing 765 miles of two-lane road.
"They've been out from dawn until dusk, with the exception of last Friday when we pulled the plows for safety concerns and the blowing (snow)," Morgan said. "They've been trying to make headway."
Dan Terrell, the superintendent for the roads department, said county crews are just about done making sure there is at least one lane available for residents to get out.
"By the end of the day tomorrow (Wednesday), we're going to be a lot closer than I anticipated when I was looking at Monday and Tuesday," he said. "By Wednesday and Thursday, there shouldn't be anything left open that hasn't had a hole broke through it to where everybody can get out.
"There'll still be a drift here and there that has an area plugged and people might have to take a different rout to get out, but we're still going to be working on that by the end of the week."
Terrell went on to say that widening of the roads continues as well, so that normal two-way traffic can resume.
"We'll have guys finish their territory today over one time, and then we'll start back over and widening things, and we'll continue to do that next week," he said. "By the weekend, though, everybody should be able to get out."
In a Facebook post Tuesday, the secondary roads department outlined how it clears the roads, as the county is divided up into eight districts, and nine motor graders, nine snowplows and two pickups with plows are used.
The department said the snowfall events created different challenges, from wet snow that jammed up equipment with the first storm early last week, to the blowing and drifting snow with the second storm later in the week.
Morgan said the county did something it hadn't done before — it hired four independent contractors to assist the county with the snow-removal effort. He hopes Gov. Kim Reynolds will declare the area a disaster relief area, as Morgan signed a disaster declaration from emergency manager Tim Richmond earlier this week.
"If you look on social media — Monroe County, Davis County, Keokuk County — we're not alone in this, and I think everyone in every road department across our region has worked pretty long hours and not been off the roads much in the last seven to nine days," he said.
"We do have several farmers in the area that have some big equipment and in some cases, better equipment that we have," Morgan said. "So we got an agreement signed, and they'll be paid a FEMA rate. We do look at this as an emergency situation. So this something that some of us have never seen in our life. It wasn't a normal snow."
Next week, high temperatures return to more seasonable conditions in the 30s.
— Chad Drury can be reached at cdrury@ottumwacourier.com, and on Twitter @ChadDrury
