Residents of Northern cities might laugh at the puny snowfall accumulations shutting down streets, bridges and interstates across the South — maybe for days, officials warn.
But there’s a simple reason that two to six inches of snow can be crippling along the Gulf Coast: Most of its cities have no snowplows.
“It so rarely snows here,” said Erin Jones, a spokeswoman for the public works department in Houston, which hasn’t had this much snow since at least 1960. “They would basically sit in storage for year after year after year.”
The state was sending 30 plows to Houston to help clear streets. But even that fleet pales to a city like Chicago, which has 300 trucks that can plow streets and spread salt, and another 200 garbage trucks that can also be equipped with plows when needed.
And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that the state’s infrastructure was designed differently than that in states used to snowfall, adding that “we’re not necessarily used to walking in a winter wonderland here.”
The limited snow infrastructure across the Southern states could spell problems for local communities trying to dig out from a historic storm that could bring up to 10 inches of snow to parts of the Gulf Coast. Now, cities are being forced to find creative solutions or rely on their lack of or limited supply of plows to help battle the snow accumulation.
Other locations have received help from nearby states. On Monday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Arkansas had sent his state 12 dump trucks with snowplows, CNN reported.
And the city of Pensacola, Fla., which does not own any snowplows, is relying on four from Atlanta, according to a city spokesman.
But the state of Florida itself has done a lot to prepare, according to Governor DeSantis, who said on Tuesday that the Florida Department of Transportation was ready to deploy 11 snowplows.
Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida division of emergency management, said that the state had learned from cold events over the last two to three decades to invest in snowplows and road solutions. Even so, he admitted that significant new investment in snow infrastructure would be unlikely.
“Do I think we’re ever going to get a situation in Florida where we have hundreds of snowplows and all kinds of de-icing equipment? No,” Mr. Guthrie said.
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