City Crews Preparing for Winter Weather Season
The City of Lee’s Summit is holding a snow dry run from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24, to allow crews to prepare for the upcoming 2023-2024 winter weather season.
City crews are testing equipment and software, and driving snow routes with plows and salt spreaders installed on trucks. The purpose of the dry run is to ensure all equipment and software are working properly and that drivers are familiar with snow routes, which is critical to the City’s snow and ice control operations. The annual snow dry run was scheduled in advance and is not in response to any forecast.
Crews are also testing turn-by-turn routing. Snow plow drivers have touchscreen tablets in their trucks to guide them through their assigned routes. This technology routes trucks more efficiently and reduces the chance of missed streets.
Prior to a typical forecasted snow event, crews will pre-treat all streets within the City. After the first inch of accumulation, City crews will begin plowing and treating primary streets followed by secondary streets. Crews will treat all residential streets after primary and secondary streets and will begin plowing all residentials if more than two inches of accumulating snow has fallen. Crews typically operate 24 hours per day. Depending on snow accumulation totals, it can take from 24-48 hours for crews to complete snow and ice control operations after snow accumulations end.
As a reminder, primary streets are major four-lane or high-volume two-lane streets, such as Pryor Road, Ward Road, Woods Chapel Road, Langsford Road and Longview Road. Secondary streets are defined as minor thoroughfares and are typically the main streets that go into neighborhoods or subdivisions from the primaries, such as Orchard Street and O'Brien Road. Residential streets are smaller side streets and cul-de-sacs off of the secondary streets, such as Willow Way and Madison Street. The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) is responsible for plowing and treating major highways through Lee’s Summit including I-470, US-50, M-291 and M-150 along with the respective interchanges and most frontage roads.
During snow events, residents can help with the snow and ice control process by removing obstacles such as vehicles, basketball hoops and trash cans from streets. We also ask residents to remain patient - crews have more than 1,000 lane miles of streets and cul-de-sacs to plow and treat.