BEATRICE – It may be tough to remember the last time the Beatrice area made it through October, November and December without measurable snow.
That’s allowed city street crews to do some work they normally wouldn’t get much of a shot at….such as street patching.


"Normally, not into December because by now we would have put down some de-icer or some salt. Once we get the residue on the roads, we really try to put away the crack sealing...because the cracks get filled full of salt or the de-icer, and then it pulls moisture."


Beatrice Street Superintendent Jason Moore says the late fall and early winter season, so far, has been a budget saver for municipal, county and state plow crews….and not having to apply sand or salt to road surfaces.  Moore says the city has plenty of road material on hand for whatever winter brings from this point forward.


"I believe I ordered in about eight or nine hundred tons in July, when I order my salt. I had about 250, maybe 300 tons from last year, so we're probably close to eleven hundred or twelve hundred tons this year. Things could always turn bad and I've seen a lot of snows into April...a lot of heavy, wet snows, but right now, things are looking really good."


Some forecasts call for one to three inches of snow in southeast Nebraska, for the first day of 2022. Moore says his department plans a preemptive step.
"Looks like it's going to be our first real blast of cold weather. We're probably going to be really close to that zero mark...it's going to be a very dry snow. We're going to go ahead and put some liquid de-icer on our highest volume streets, probably Thursday of this week...so we can have traffic track it around and it will be there for the weekend. It will be the first time that we've applied any de-icing material to the roads this year."


Trucks are ready with plows and will be loaded with sand or salt. Moore says the city also can mix the de-icing liquid with salt to deal with some situations.
"Salt may melt down on an average day into the high teens. If you mix it with the Apex meltdown, salt will actually melt down into the single digits, so it lowers the melting point of salt."


While temperatures are expected to take a dive for the New Year’s Holiday weekend, the longer range forecast calls for some recovery into the 30s and 40s for early next week.