Winter Is Coming: State Highway Crews Prepare For Snow

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- After the past two days---and Wednesday breaking records---it may seem hard to believe that the official start to winter is over a month away.

As Mike Schuh reports, the state says it has you---or at least your highways---covered.

It's kind of hard to believe that we're going to see snowplows and salt trucks soon. It's too soon to talk about it but the state has an early deadline. In order to have row upon row of new plow trucks ready for winter, they started months ago.

"I'm from Syracuse," said David Coyne, State Highway Administration CEO. "This is a July 4th weekend most winters in Maryland."

Maybe there's extra confidence because of a thing called the Monster Quad. It costs over $200,000 and is the largest snow plow and salt-carrying truck you can get. It's huge and can carry salt twice as long as their other trucks.

"We won't have to go back to our fuel storage facilities or our salt storage facilities. We can keep those trucks on the road longer so that gives us a lot of versatility," Coyne said.

The plow pilots are confident this will be a good season.

"This is the time of year where the guys get a little extra money in their pocket from all the overtime they have to work," said SHA driver Tim Reed.

By Wednesday night, five feet of snow is expected in parts of New York. That state is already moving their plows from other areas of the state to open their roadways.

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