BEATRICE – Areas of far southeast Nebraska are making it to the end of 2024….without a first measurable snowfall of this winter season.


While city, county and state plowing crews prepare well in advance for the snowy season...December has been more like fall, than winter.


"Maybe in the last ten years we've seen something like this happen, where it's been a really, really mild December, and we've gotten by without having to have any trucks out.....so, it's been a good thing."


Beatrice Street Superintendent Jason Moore says the city’s snowplow trucks loaders and graders are ready to go as of early November, and there’s plenty of sand, salt and de-icing liquid. "The bridges tend to have a heavy frost that will form with the cold air underneath the bridge, and it will tend to make a little frost get on there, on the bridge surface. And so, we go out and pre-treat that with our liquid de-icing material just to kind of prevent the frost and the bridge deck from getting slick. We also try and hit some of the curbs in town and help them from any slick spots."


Though winter officially began about ten days ago…..snowflakes have been missing from the equation, so far this season. Only a chance of a light accumulation was in the forecast for the final day of 2024. One upside from the unusually mild weather is that street crews have been able to get other work done such as sealing cracks in streets and highways.


"Right now, all of our streets have been dry...all of the cracks are in good shape...they're all taking the tar really nice...and you're seeing the guys working on roads that we're going to be armor-coating in the summer of next year."


Because of new surfaces on 33rd Street and Lincoln Street near the new elementary school, Moore says they’ll be handled a bit differently this winter season.


"The stretch from the cemetery north on 33rd through the roundabout...and then west on Lincoln....that stretch is new concrete and we can't put any salt on that new concrete. We've got signs out saying roadway not salted. What we plan to do right now is we will pretreat it heavier with our liquid de-icing material...and then we will also have gravel which is treated with liquid de-icer and will apply it to the roadways out there to try and help with traction."


On hand at a city road material warehouse is over two-thousand tons of salt. Moore says the city will go with straight salt this year, rather than a one-to-four mix of sand and salt.


It appears the first few days of the new year will be colder….but still slim chances of measurable snow.