JEFFERSON COUNTY – In a week that has brought some snow and subzero temperatures across the state and concerns about road graders and road conditions to certain parts of Southeast Nebraska, the Jefferson County highway department is stressing safety for those traveling during any adverse weather conditions.  

"So far this year...everything’s been pretty good,” assistant highway supervisor Terry Blas said, knocking the wood on the table in the room for extra effect. 

In their regular meeting with the Jefferson County commissioners this week, the supervisors of the county’s highway department stressed that when faced with winter weather drivers need to take steps to keep themselves and others safe, while underscoring that their priority is to do what they have to to clear roads as fast as they can. 

“We try to do the roads as efficiently as we can, without losing gravel, getting them open quick, and taking care of stuff. And sometimes that involves us being on the wrong side of the road. It’s just plain and simple,” Blas said this week. “If somebody else wants to take the phone calls we get, that’s fine with me. We’re trying to maximize our fuel, our gravel, our time, everything just to get the roads open. And sometimes that causes us to do some stuff we don’t normally do.” 

“We’re trying to get to the roads as quickly as we can in the most safe manner that we can,” Jefferson County commissioner Mark Schoenrock said. “We’re trying to do those other things – conserve our gravel, it’s the most paramount issue, trying not to throw the gravel off into the ditch. We’re trying to do it all in the most cost-efficient way that we can. But safety is always at the top of the list.” 

To determine which roads need to be cleared first after a snowstorm, the road crews follow a priority system. If there’s a report of an emergency situation, that gets tackled first – otherwise, the main roads are the first to get cleared. Then, they’ll handle school routes and post office routes before venturing out into side roads and county roads.  

This week, the crews first tackled 562nd Avenue and 720 Road, two back roads that stretch north of Fairbury and up through Daykin. Conditions on those two roads were hit or miss at best as of Tuesday afternoon with light snow continuing to fall.  

What’s the standard policy for getting streets cleared and roads reponed? “It’s whatever we can do to get the roads open fastest,” Blas said. 

“There’s a few hours before we go to work that’s spent driving the roads to see what’s going on,” he expanded. “The first day, we try to get one pass down every road. If you want a dirt road opened, you gotta call – unless we’ve got to blow through it. If it’s just a mile it ain’t a big deal, but some of them dirt roads get pretty drifty.” 

“Terry and I split up, we each take a different part of the county and just get a feel of it, where we need to be. Sometimes I’ll be east-west, sometimes I’ll go north-south if the roads are terrible. Usually it takes a couple of trips around the county to get a feel of where we need to be,” supervisor Jason Eyer said. “We’ve had storms where Steele City gets slammed, and there’s not much in Daykin – so everybody goes down there to try to help that area, or whatever needs to be done.” 

Complicating matters is the simple variability and volatility of these conditions – everyone involved said that no snowstorms are the same, making preparing for and adjusting to every incoming blast a unique challenge. 

“Everybody wants to be first [to have their roads cleared], and that ain’t how it happens. We do our main roads to get the most people moving that we can,” Blas said. “And the snow makes it different every time, it’s never the same with snow.” 

Of course, this week the conditions brought not a ton of snow throughout the county, but persistent cold – with wind chills bringing the feels-like temperatures into the negatives all week. And that pervasive, constant cold brings with it its own unique challenges compared to storms like the major one last month that brought half a foot of snow that persisted for days. 

“The cold temperatures make it a lot harder because these machines are so restricted on their fuel. It jells up a lot quicker,” Blas said. “But with the little snow we’re getting we aren’t having to run snowplows, which makes a world of difference, you can get over [the roads] faster. You put a two-ton on the front of those machines, that slows them down quite a bit.” 

Officials underscored that the county will not provide road snow plowing when there is less than three inches of snow accumulation, as was the case for much of the county for much of this week. And that’s largely because plowing streets and roads that don’t have a lot of snow largely serves to push the existing gravel off the roads and into ditches, which the county says they can’t afford to do because gravel is such a “precious commodity.”