Can Snow College Make Our Roads Safer?

No need to fear WINTER STORM 2008!—this year the Washington State Department of Transportation is arming more of its maintenance professionals than ever with diplomas from Snow College, a two-day course typically held on-site at WSDOT maintenance facilities around the state.

"Like everything else you do in life, you get training for what you do," says Dave McCormick, WSDOT's assistant regional administrator for operations. "This is a big deal for us. We spend a lot of time getting ready for winter."

This past summer, 180 WSDOT employees attended at a total cost of about $186,000 to taxpayers (the tab includes wages paid to employees while in class). For the course, the department brings in consultants to talk shop about everything from what chemicals to put on the roads (calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, sodium chloride, or potassium acetate, depending on the temperature range), when to put it on and how much to use, and how to deal with different types of precipitation in the region's many microclimates.

WSDOT Northwest Regional Administrator Lorena Eng says making the roads drivable during a storm is more complicated and technical than people might think. "People at Snow College learn the science of snow," she says "There [are] many different kinds: ice, blowy snow, wet snow."

Mel Reitz, a WSDOT maintenance and operations superintendent in Snohomish County, went to Snow College two summers ago. He says he was impressed with the amount of on-the-job experience the "professors" had. The most surprising thing he learned: "The cost differential between different deicing chemicals."

Reitz says it was also useful to learn when the most effective time is to put salt and sand down. "What we try and do is obviously put the stuff down before the storm and at night when there's the least impact on traffic," Reitz says. "But there [are] also issues of humidity. If there's moisture in the air, we're not going to put it down. The bottom line is that this stuff costs money and we're stewards of the people."