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Boston officials prep for first storm of the season
Boston will likely not get as much snow this weekend as the rest of Massachusetts, but officials are preparing for everything.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and other officials updated the public Friday ahead of this weekend’s storm, predicted to be the first major snowfall of the winter.
Much of Massachusetts is expected to get between eight inches and a foot of snow, but Boston will likely see somewhere between three and six inches.
Crews were prepping vehicles for the storm Friday morning, Wu said. The same trucks that help with trash pickup and other city services in the warmer months are being outfitted with salt spreaders. Lights, brakes, and other equipment is being double checked.
“There’s a lot of turnover and transformation that happens,” Wu said at a press conference Friday.
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The storm will likely begin Saturday night. A winter storm watch is in effect from 4 p.m. Saturday through Sunday. Flakes will continue to fall through much of Sunday, but officials are hopeful that the storm will abate before the Monday morning commute.
“Nothing is quite predictable here in New England, but the timing of this, so far fingers crossed, does mean it should have less of an impact on the normal rhythms of our weekday commutes and school pickups and dropoffs and all of that,” Wu said.
Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge said that this has the potential to be a “real storm” for Bostonians, but the level of accumulation is not going to threaten to close streets like what would happen during “blizzard-scale” operations.
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Crews are on standby to scale up or down depending on the storm’s intensity, officials said. There is no snow emergency planned for the city of Boston.
The city’s Emergency Management office is in contact with state partners like MEMA and other organizations like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army to prepare for any potential emergencies.
The city has the ability to use as many as 800 pieces of equipment during the storm, Daniel Nee of the Public Works Department said. There is 49,000 tons of salt on hand across the city waiting to be used. Nee said that there are no concerns about a lack of snowplow drivers.
Experts are not predicting a significant storm surge, Wu said, but officials are monitoring the coastline of Boston. This has become more important in recent years, as water levels rise, she added.
Boston has expanded shelter capacity in recent months, Wu said. Both those run by the city and other groups are in close collaboration to make sure capacity is not reached and that overflow sites are available if necessary during the storm.
Wu urged residents to be on the lookout for anyone outside during the storm that may be in danger.
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“If anyone needs help, if you see someone that looks like they are in need of warmth and shelter, in the middle of the storm, that becomes a public health emergency, so please call 911,” she said.
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