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Preparation time has arrived for the first big winter storm of the year.
Officials say the biggest concern isn't the snow, but the dangerously low temperatures.
Matt Killion with MoDOT says crews are already at work.
"We typically start our preparations 48 hours in advance," said Killion, assistant district engineer for MoDOT's Kansas City district. "So, we are doing some treating ahead of the storm. We're prepping our trucks with the salt sprayers and sawing the plows on the front of the trucks to be ready for the storm."
With temperatures expected to plunge into the single digits, MoDOT says to be aware it may take crews longer to clear the roads because of the temperature's impact on their equipment. Major roads and highways will be the priority for their crews.
"We'll typically focus first on bridges and overpasses and those areas that tend to ice over first," said Killion. "So, we're pretreating in those areas and we know those sort of trouble areas to keep an eye on. Make sure we're kind of there first."
Moving from the road to your home, hardware stores are a good place to find items needed to protect your home during the storm.
"We have a lot of pet safe salt here, as well as calcium chloride," said John White, general manager of Westlake Ace Hardware Brookside. "We've been selling through a lot of our snowblowers as we're expecting a lot of snow. On heat protectors, we have faucet covers, our heat tape, which can actually warm your pipes to prevent them from bursting."
In addition to protecting your home, they have products to keep you warm in case of an emergency.
"Hand warmers, heated blankets, which is a new line we brought in with our heated products," White said. "As well as heated scarfs, heated seats and then flashlights, weather radios in case of an emergency."
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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