Subzero temperatures affect ability to salt snowy roads. Here’s what Wichita is doing

The subzero temperatures expected across Kansas the next few days will reduce the effectiveness of common salts used to remove snow from the roads, according to a Wichita official.

“This isn’t Kansas weather,” Wichita Interim Director of Public Works and Utilities Ben Nelson said during a Friday news conference. “This is more like Arctic weather that is occurring in Kansas right now.”

Wind chills are expected to reach as low as minus 30 in the next few days, according to the Wichita branch of the National Weather Service, which said that “actual air temperatures” in the region may fall to minus 10 to minus 15 degrees by early Tuesday morning. Wichita is expected to see up to 7 inches of snow from Saturday night through Monday morning, according to the NWS.

“A lot of the times when we get cold — very, very, very cold weather like this — coupled with any kind of precipitation, it’s difficult for our normal salt and sand mix to be as effective as it is in normal temperatures,” Nelson said. “Normal road salt … melts fairly effective down to about 10 degrees, but once you get below that it becomes about 90% less effective.”

Staff will add calcium chloride, a different type of salt, to its normal sodium chloride to better treat the roads. The calcium chloride is more effective in lower temperatures, he said.

Winter weather usually calls for calcium chloride to be added to the mix once or twice each winter season, he said. It was used earlier this week when the roughly 150-person crew and 60 trucks started to treat roads with a salt-sand mix after a previous snowfall.

The sand helps with vehicle traction.

The trucks can be adjusted to dump up to 50% more material at a time and Nelson expects to use some of that extra capacity over the next few days.

Wichita has used about 9,500 tons of salt-sand mix so far this winter, he said. In the past several years, the most material used was 19,950 tons in the 2013-2014 winter and the least was 5,960 tons in the 2017-2018 winter, according to Nelson.

Wichita has about 6,000 tons of salt-sand mix ready to use and roughly another 32,000 tons that would need to be mixed before being used, he said.

Wichita crews started 12-hour shifts on Sunday and will continue as the winter weather descends on the area. The crews treat and plow about 1,800 miles of roads, he said.

“We do not do the side streets,” he said.

Nelson said he doesn’t expect “very good driving conditions” for the few days after the snow starts to fall.

Snow removal efforts in Wichita can also be tracked at wichita.gov. Click on “Get Information” and then “Public Works & Utilities.” That will bring up a page that has an option to click on “Snow Removal,” under “Streets.”