Plow-truck drivers braced Thursday for a busy Friday in metro Toledo as a powerful winter storm approached the region, while many garbage-truck drivers got an unexpected day off just before Christmas.
The Ohio Department of Transportation, its local counterpart in Toledo, and other agencies expected trucks to hit the roads at varying times late Thursday or Friday morning in time to combat the current winter’s first accumulating snow.
But in most of northwest Ohio and far southeast Michigan, it was the extreme cold and high wind the storm was expected to bring that posed the main hazards, with the latter likely complicating roadway maintenance even with only a few inches of snow expected.
Maumee asked its residents to move all parked vehicles off city streets from 7 p.m. Thursday until noon Saturday to give plows room to work, while Northwood noted that on-street parking is forbidden there after any 2-inch or greater snowfall. A Toledo notice called attention to an online map showing the streets that will get its plows’ first attention along with where parking is banned during snow emergencies.
Republic Services announced Thursday morning that its trash and recycling pickups scheduled for Friday in Toledo, Sylvania, Oregon, Sandusky, and neighboring areas had been canceled.
Rochelle Bowen, a Republic spokesman, said residents who could not fit two weeks of trash into their city carts for pickup Dec. 30 could also place bagged trash next to those carts.
“If we have to, we’ll have rear-end loaders [trucks] following our regular routes,” she said.
Only bagged trash will be handled in this manner, and only on Dec. 30, Ms. Bowen said while warning that residents should not use cardboard boxes for waste pickup because of the likelihood they will fail if it rains late next week. Regular pickup schedules are planned next week and the week after, including on the federal holidays that fall on Mondays.
Forecasters expected only 2 to 4 inches of snow in the Toledo area, with higher accumulations possible in far northwest Ohio and neighboring parts of Indiana and Ohio. But the storm’s frigid air and high winds were expected to spread rapidly into the entire region overnight, causing moisture on the ground from the earlier rain to a flash freeze and posing a windchill hazard expected to last until Saturday morning.
“If you must travel, keep an extra flashlight, food, and water in your vehicle in case of an emergency,” forecasters at the National Weather Service office in Cleveland said. “Avoid outside activities if possible. When outside, make sure you wear appropriate clothing, a hat, and gloves.”
Storm travel
How strongly area officials would try to discourage travel during the storm’s height Friday remained to be seen. Ohio’s system assigns authority over storm-related travel warnings to county sheriffs and emergency management agencies. They may advise caution, (Level 1); warn against nonessential travel, (Level 2); or forbid all but emergency workers and selected others from being out on the roads, (Level 3).
Toledo officials said salt/plow trucks would be deployed on 12-hour shifts starting at noon Friday. They would, as has long been the case, prioritize clearing primary streets used by emergency vehicles and transit buses before moving onto minor and residential streets.
A new feature added to the city’s snow-removal web page is the use of global positioning to track and display snowplow locations on Toledo streets. The city’s online map also shows sections of streets where parking bans may be imposed to ensure emergency vehicles’ passage.
City ordinances require landowners to clear public sidewalks that cross their property within 24 hours of snowfall’s end, and forbid plowing or shoveling snow from private walks, parking lots, or driveways into the public streets.
Light rain began falling in Toledo around 2 p.m., while the sharply colder weather, snow, and high wind that were expected to be the storm’s local hallmarks were already affecting the northern and central Great Plains states.
Storm on the move
In South Dakota, Rosebud Sioux Tribe emergency manager Robert Oliver said tribal authorities had struggled to clear roads of drifting snow to deliver propane and firewood to homes.
“This weather and the amount of equipment we have — we don’t have enough,” Mr. Oliver said, noting that rescues of people stranded in their homes had to be halted early Thursday when the hydraulic fluid in heavy equipment froze amid a 41 below zero windchill.
State leaders in Texas pledged that rapidly dropping temperatures would not cripple the state’s electricity grid as happened during a February, 2021 storm, resulting in hundreds of deaths.
Elsewhere in the United States, authorities worried about the potential for power failures and warned people to take precautions to protect older and homeless people and livestock — and, if possible, to postpone travel. Some utilities were urging customers to turn down their thermostats to conserve energy.
“This event could be life-threatening if you are stranded," according to an online post by the National Weather Service in Minnesota, where transportation and patrol officials reported dozens of crashes and vehicles off the road.
“This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Biden warned Thursday in the Oval Office after a briefing from federal officials. “This is serious stuff.”
Michigan State Police prepared to deploy additional troopers to help motorists. And along I-90 in northern Indiana, crews were braced to clear as much as a foot of snow as meteorologists warned of blizzard conditions immediately downwind of Lake Michigan starting Thursday evening.
More than 2,156 flights within, into, or out of the United States had been canceled as of Thursday afternoon, according to the tracking site FlightAware, and another 1,576 flights scheduled Friday already were scrubbed. Airports in Chicago and Denver were reporting the most cancellations.
Amtrak, meanwhile, canceled service on more than 20 routes, primarily in the Midwest and including all service in Ohio for both Thursday and Friday nights.
Perhaps most symbolic of the storm’s impact on Christmas festivities was the decision the Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland store in Frankenmuth, Mich., announced Thursday to keep its doors closed both Friday and Saturday.
The potential existed for a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — to develop near the Great Lakes, which would increase winds and create blizzard conditions.
In famously snowy Buffalo, forecasters predicted a “once-in-a-generation storm" because of heavy lake-effect snow, wind gusts as high as 65 mph, whiteouts and the potential for extensive power outages. Mayor Byron Brown urged people to stay home, and the National Hockey League postponed the Buffalo Sabres' home game against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Information from The Blade’s news services was used in this report.
First Published December 22, 2022, 2:55 p.m.
