ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. — As the snow comes in, so do the snow plowing crews.
John Lyons is the engineer for St. Charles County.
The St. Charles County Highway Department maintains and improves public county roads, constructs new roads and provides snow removal.
Lyons said approximately 40 plow drivers were on the roads Wednesday.
"We’ve been out since 11 o'clock last night, we couldn’t pre-treat anything because of the rain," he said.
Lyons said they were finally able to do work around 3 a.m.
"It takes about 12-plus hours to go through our routes," he adds.
He said crews have 800 miles of road they work with.
"It’s a pretty heavy workload," Lyons said.
Since the teams are working 12-hour shifts, the next team is expected to come in at 7 p.m. for the overnight shift and work until 7 a.m.
From there, they'll keep switching until roads are clear.
He said they've seen the same amount of snow spread across the area with certain parts near the Mississippi River facing some drifting.
"We have more drifting in north St. Charles and Portage Des Sioux and West Alton area because of the topography," he said.
Lyons said Wednesday afternoon's lull in the snow has been very helpful.
"Every amount of time we can get without new snow coming down will help us get ahead," Lyons said.
But they still have to prep for the road ahead.
"Given the amount of snow we have on our grounds, we don’t expect it to be clear before the next round. We’ll have more of it clear but it won’t be all cleared before the next round starts," Lyons said.
Lyons also said fewer cars on the road means fewer accidents and less to work around. He emphasized the importance of drivers staying home if they can.