McAlester, Okla. — The National Weather Service has advised Pittsburg County Emergency Management to brace for the heaviest parts of Tuesday’s winter storm.
A Winter Storm Watch was issued for the county whose biggest city is McAlester, and they have been told to prepare for four to six inches of wet heavy snow.
“The best thing I can see about what is coming our way is right now [is] we’re not expecting a lot of ice,” Kevin Enloe, Pittsburg County Emergency manager, said. “We are expecting the worst, but we always hope for the best.”
Enloe is coordinating the county’s response with the cities of McAlester and Krebs and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.
One of the biggest concerns about the coming storm is there is no window of time to pre-treat roads because it will start as a rain event that switches over to snow, Enloe said.
“We don’t want to just put it down and then it washes away,” he said. “It’s a waste of money and resources.”
Monday, the temperature hovered near 50 degrees for a high, and that is expected to help somewhat, but crews are ready for a lot of heavy, wet snow and problems on elevated surfaces such as overpasses.
“We’ve been told the heaviest bans will be headed our way,” he said. “How that plays out, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Enloe could not speak for local school districts, but he said some of them have discussed opening their doors Tuesday morning and then possibly having early release if the road conditions become dangerous.
FOX23 spoke with residents stocking up on essentials before the storm at local grocery stores. Many of them said they felt four to six inches of snow was concerning enough where they wanted to prep even if there was to be significant melting the day after the snow falls.
This is a developing story and the FOX23 Severe Weather Team is continuing to track the latest data on this coming storm.
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