Plowing Wyoming Roads Takes A Lot Of Strategy And Planning

I'm sure you've looked out your window on a snowy day in Wyoming and, assuming you live in a town, wonder what the thinking is behind when and how the city or county plows the snow.

Let's start with Wyoming towns, then we'll look at our highways.

A lot of study over the years has gone into the most effective plowing strategy.

Your town will start with the most important roads.

Those would be the ones that lead to hospitals and other emergency facilities, like the fire department.

Keeping those arteries clear is time-consuming enough.

That's why neighborhood roads are left for when they have time.

Cities have only so much money and resources to plow with, so they must think about when to call out those machines and hold them back.

Winter is always unpredictable, so there is a lot of guessing going on.

As for Wyoming highways, there's a bit of a problem with that.

Wyoming highways, you might have noticed, are long and stretch through vast distances of NOTHING.

That makes it difficult to stage resources along the way so the trucks can refuel and reload.

Wyoming has had a shortage of plow drivers for quite a few years now. So they have to move their drivers and trucks around to where they think the worst of the storm is going to be.

Like in Wyoming towns, there is a lot of guessing going on since winter never operates.

So, if you're wondering why WYDOT might have missed plowing a critical area, it might be because they were accounting for the forecast, and the forecast got it wrong.

If you've lived in Wyoming long enough you know that sometimes it's impossible to keep up with the amount of snow and wind-drifts.

When WYDOT can't keep up they just shut the road down until they can get to it.

They have no other options.