City of Sisters ready for plowing snow

Sisters’ Public Works Department is ready for the snowfall that was expected to hit Sisters this week.

Forecasts called for four to six inches of snow early in the week, followed by more snow at the end of the week.

“We’ve got all three trucks and we’ve got plows and sanders on all the trucks,” said Public Works director Gary Frazee.

Frazee said the city is continuing to use magnesium chloride de-icer almost exclusively, which the department has used successfully for several years. The Oregon Department of Transportation and Deschutes County have also moved into using chemical de-icers instead of crushed cinders where practicable.

“When you have packed snow you use cinders because the de-icer doesn’t cut through the snow,” Frazee said.

But that doesn’t happen too often. Frazee said the use of magnesium chloride has reduced the use of cinders by 90 to 95 percent.

Using chemical de-icer allows the city crews to cover the streets in an hour to an hour-and-a-half — with no cleanup later. And, Frazee notes, the reduction in cinder use makes for a marked improvement in winter air quality.

He recalled that when the city used cinders exclusively, “there’d be that cinder dust lurking in the air for a month” when Sisters started to thaw out.