KENT COUNTY, Mich. — If there ever was a time to take the day off work, the Monday after Christmas might take the cake (as well as Santa's leftover milk and cookies).
The Kent County Road Commission, though, perhaps unlike your post-holiday workplace, is fully staffed. After all, they have thousands of miles of lanes to plow, even when those lanes are doing their best Robert Frost poem impression as The Road Not Taken.
"Rush hour this morning was not as busy," Steve Roon, director of maintenance and local road construction at the commission, said to FOX 17 on Monday.
"Sometimes that is good, but sometimes it can be bad, too," he said. "When there are less people, there exists an opportunity to go faster."
Even with Christmas now in the rearview mirror, Roon says it's still best to stay on the road commission's nice list (as well as the law's) and drive according to the conditions. That way, you can stay safe, too.
"Yield some speed to Mother Nature," he said.
Roon says Monday's storm was complicated by Sunday's rain, which would have washed away any form of pre-treatment the commission would have normally applied.
"Anything we wanted to do before the storm wasn't possible," he said.
When the wind picked up overnight and rain turned to snow, the commission was then able to begin spreading salt and sand, a mixture made to "stick to the road and stay where we want it."
Ideally, Roon says his crew tries to complete a full run of the county's 5,000-plus lane miles within 36 hours of a snowstorm's end. But with flakes falling throughout the day on Monday, plows are likely to double-back on busier roads before hitting neighborhood streets, potentially including yours and mine.
"We've got it on our list and we're going to get there when the storm allows, but it may not be until tomorrow," Roon said.
"It's something we're used to and our men and women do it well."
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