DEERFIELD — Thursday morning around 8:30, Highway Department Superintendent Kevin Scarborough sat at his desk in the town Highway Garage, monitoring online storm radars, watching as a snowstorm swept into Franklin County.
Outside, a few massive salt spreaders idled in the cold, as the day’s first snowflakes drifted down from an overcast sky, and DPW workers pulled on jackets, readying themselves to disperse throughout town and pre-treat roads with salt.
“There’ll be one guy in the center line, and another in the gutter,” Scarborough said, tracing one 10-mile route down River Road — one of five routes — delineated in marker on an assessor’s map. Each route takes about four hours to complete.
“One of the big problems we have is someone’s always first, and someone’s always last,” he continued, highlighting the amount of time it takes to complete each route.
For some roads, two plows follow one after another. The first is equipped with a heavy-duty plow, and another, smaller truck following behind to clean up side streets and intersections.
Scarborough said there’s a lot of strategy involved in snow removal; preparation starts long before the first flakes fall.
Before winter each year, the town’s five salt spreaders are carefully calibrated to dispense the right amount of salt for each individual route. On the day of the storm, the trucks depart from the garage about an hour in front of the storm. When they return hours later, they’re equipped with a plow and they head right back out on the same route.
“In pre-treating, you really need to follow the storm and do it quickly. Timing is everything,” explained foreman Mike Phillips, noting, as laid out in a snow policy, Deerfield’s plows clear around 100 miles of road every storm.
That policy also dictates that plows don’t leave until at least 2 inches of snow has fallen.
If salt is put down too soon, passing cars kick it off the road before it can be effective, On the other hand, if spreaders dump too late, the salt has to melt through the snow.
Ideally, Scarborough said, the goal is to create a “slurry layer” beneath the snow, preventing snow pack and ice, making it easier for plows to later sweep the roads clear.
“A big storm is generally around 16 hours, but we’ve had some up to 20 hours,” said Phillips.
“This is our fleet, ready to go,” he said, pushing open the door leading into the garage.