Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Winter is right around the corner in Western New York.
While it's been one of the more milder falls to date with little-to-no snowfall across the region, that is about to change this week with forecasts predicting a change to wintry conditions expected later in the week. The highest chance for wet snow will initially come at night and across the higher terrain, but as the weekend approaches, the mixed precipitation/wet snow should become more widespread with lake enhancement figuring into the equation as well.
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With snow returning in the coming days and weeks, officials in the City of Buffalo say they are ready for whatever winter has in store this upcoming season.
Public Works commissioner Nate Marton says they have had some new additions to their snow fighting fleet, while also making some replacements where needed.
"We've got a little bit of an aging fleet, and I've talked about that for last couple years now. So upgrading our fleet is adding numbers, which is really important, but adding pieces of equipment that are more reliable that can be on the street longer," said Marton during an appearance on "Hardline" with Joe Beamer on Sunday. "Certainly the equipment we've got is supplementing what we have. There's a net increased number, but we also did move some of our older equipment out of the fleet, that just wasn't reliable and that couldn't be on the road as much as it was off the road."
According to Marton, the Department of Public Works (DPW) has added seven new plows to its fleet it has eight loaders that are also in, and the department is waiting on the delivery of six more plows.
"The timeline for getting equipment and ordering equipment, especially heavy duty stuff, is really extended these days with the supply chain, so we're pressing our vendor as quick as we can to have six more, even additional, large scale, heavy duty plows on the streets here pretty quick," Marton noted.
While Marton has only been in office for just over two years now, he says the number of equipment that is operational, highly functioning, and on the street for the DPW is a pretty good number.
"We would always want more, of course, but I think it's a really good number. And that's thanks to current Mayor [Chris] Scanlon, former Mayor [Byron] Brown, the Council members who are all important in terms of the budget requests and the capital requests, and all of us working on behalf of our residents to make sure we got the right tools in place," Marton said.
Last year, Marton says city officials and the DPW took a step back and got into the fundamental elements of the annual snow plan in Buffalo. They examined the roles of Buffalo Police and Buffalo Fire along with the DPW, the city's response to past storms like the 2022 Christmas Weekend Blizzard, and more, and he felt the response was pretty decent this past winter.
This year, the DPW will have the same approach to tackling, what he calls, "day-to-day basics" of 2-8 inches of snow, while also trying to make sure the city can get more done quicker and better.
"We've got our equipment out, we'll have more wings. Not only do we have a plow - if you see our big plows coming down, we'll have a plow on the front and there's a wing that actually can fold down and give you almost a double lane clearance. We've got more wings on this year, we've made a concerted effort to just change that a bit," Martin noted. "You can't use those in high traffic or high volume elements, but certainly in the evenings or nights when there's not a lot of traffic, you can put that wing down and get a lot more wider clearance on a single pass down the street."
Marton adds the DPW has added a couple new positions for drivers and operators that will help the city out, which he thinks puts the city in a good place heading into the winter.
However, in the event of a more substantial snowfall in the city, Marton says there is a plan in place that was put to the test last year.
"In that case, and actually what we did in not only that November event but in the blizzard too, when you get that type of snowfall that's more than 18 or 24 inches, especially if it's heavy and wet early in the season, at some point in time, you're not able to even push it with our heavy duty plot. So you've got to remove it," Marton said. "In those big third of the city-type events or full city events, we've got to bring in outside help. There's no municipality that has the kind of equipment in their own stock that can handle that. No city has that right, and that's why we have municipal cooperation with county officials, with state officials."
Marton notes the city has its own set of private contractors it can call, around 17 contractors that can mobilize just about 600 pieces of loaders and dump trucks on an as needed basis.
"So for an emergency, if it looks like it's coming, we will make some calls, we'll get out an alert, and get some of that equipment to supplement our regular fleet," he said. "We have to keep attention to roads and clearing mains, but then some of those other ones can come in and be specialty help for fire and police, if they need to respond to emergencies. A little bit more scattered when we've got our focused response of clearing."
And those private contractors aren't necessarily focused on the typical getting to the side streets. Marton and the DPW will bring in the contractors, along with county and state resources when the city is facing a snow emergency, where they need to remove large amounts of it.
"The typical plowing and clearing of streets is dependent on the DPW," Marton said. "Our goal is to get, I know it's in our snow plan, within 24 hours of the end of a storm, we're getting to the side streets. We want to get there quicker, so more equipment, more reliable equipment - which we've been able to add this year - as well as more bodies in the plows are really what helps us get around the entirety of the city a little bit more."