Plowing the Palouse with WSDOT

Plowing the Palouse is a lot harder than it seems as I found out this week riding a long with one of their veterans. Russ Wagner has been with the Washington State Department of Transportation for sixteen years, so who better to show us what it takes to keep the roads clear.

As you pass a snow plow by, it may seem like a simple job, just push the snow out of the road, right? For Russ, it’s not so simple.

“Yeah we probably put 25 to 30,000 pounds (of sand) down today in probably two hours.”

Not only does Russ need to do the math for how much sand he’ll need for the roads he wants to hit, he has to consider the conditions, upcoming forecast and expected travel on these roads. He is his own computer when it comes to finding the most effective way to resist mother nature’s icy grip.

Russ and his team are responsible for over 800 miles of pavement in this area, plowing, blowing, sanding and de-icing. They do it all.

Loaded up and ready to plow, Russ and I hit the road. First, we lay sand out on the Pullman-Moscow highway from Pullman to the Idaho border. Next, it’s north towards Oaksdale on State Route 27.

With the aid of constant radio chatter back and forth between drivers, Russ realizes 27 is in worse shape than first thought.

With severe drifting snow there, it’ll take more than a single snowplow to clear it. So, Russ calls in the big guns. With the help of a massive 12-foot-high blower, Russ can fire the snow out of the road instead of plow it. His machine can eat up hundreds of pounds of snow in seconds and is capable of shooting snow up to 250 feet away. Russ must be careful too, the force of the snow coming out of the blower could even knock down powerlines.

While taking a break in Oaksdale a driver stops to tell Russ there’s a semi stuck in a ditch just outside of town. There really is only one machine on the road that has the muscle to pull a semi out of a snow bank. Fortunately for this furniture delivery driver, it’s Russ to the rescue. The blower pulls it out like a toy.

All in a day’s work for Russ. Now it’s back to taming 10-foot-high snow berms. These mountains have been built up with high winter winds, some areas of road would be completely covered in hours, if it wasn’t for the constant attention WSDOT must give it.

The topography of the Palouse doesn’t help either, with wide empty spaces and gentle snow-covered hills, surface snow is easily caught by these winds covering everything the wind can reach in a matter of hours.

Many of us would get frustrated by how much work goes into so little, when with more snow and wind the road will be looking just as bad in only a few hours. Wiping away his progress. But not Russ.

“Our goal is to make sure that, families and children and grandparents and everyone gets home safe at night, that’s our goal, we’ll put the hours in… to make sure you get home safe.”

When winter grips on hard you know to stay off the roads, for Russ and team, that’s where they hit full stride.