Episode 146: First storm of the season

Every agency has gone through it.  Perfect planning for winter, perfect preparation for that first storm, then mother nature sends a curve ball, all the planets line up and all the little things add up to a big thing.  That’s what happened December 1st, 2025 to the Missouri DOT in the St. Louis area. 

Becky Allmeroth, Chief Safety and Operations Officer at the Missouri DOT sets the stage and tells the story and aftermath of this first of the season storm.

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Transcript

Rick 0:11

Welcome back to Talkin Winter Ops. Every agency's gone through it. Perfect planning for winter, perfect preparations for that first storm. Then Mother Nature sends a curveball. All the planets line up, and a whole bunch of little things add up to a big thing. That's what happened December first, to the Missouri DOT in the St. Louis area. Now, we were planning on having a conversation with Becky Alme roth anyway on a completely different topic. And we were still and we're still going to get to that topic in the future. But I had a squirrel moment when this St. Louis storm caught my attention. I've known Becky for quite a while, and she was willing to talk about the MODOT response, so here we are. You're going to like this conversation with Becky. She sets the stage for the first of the season storm that hits on a Monday with lots of construction work zones in place. A forecast that wasn't exactly right on. Well, we'll let Becky tell the story about what happened right after this. There's lots of groups and organizations out there doing really good work to help the wintertime battle with snow and ice. With all the effort being focused on figuring out better ways to do winter maintenance, how do you sort out what's best for your situation and answer those nagging winter maintenance questions that keep you up at night? The Ashto Winter Weather Management Technical Service Program can help answer those questions and more. Created over 30 years ago as SICOP and recently rebranded as the AASHTO Winter Weather Management Technical Service Program, their core mission is to seek out promising winter maintenance technologies, ensure they're thoroughly evaluated, and promote them to DOTs here in the U.S. With a modest annual contribution, you and your agency can take advantage of this technical service program. Find out more about the Ashto Winter Weather Management Technical Service Program by visiting their website at transportation.org slash winter dash weather dash management. Becky Allmeroth. What does it say on your business card?

Becky 2:33

It says Chief Safety and Operations Officer. So my I would say kingdom is anything operations. So I have traffic and highway safety. So traffic engineering, highway safety. I have motor carrier services, which Missouri is a little bit unique that we do motor motor carrier registrations and everything IFTA and tax compliance, OSOW permits. I also have employee safety and emergency management, and then everything maintenance.

Rick 3:10

Uh-huh. If it doesn't fit neatly in one of the other boxes at the Missouri DOT, it fits in operations, right?

Becky 3:17

You named it. And I, in my opinion, I have the exciting side of the house. So I have not been bored a day in my career.

Rick 3:26

Yeah, there's never a dull moment in operations, that's for sure.

Becky 3:29

Exactly.

Rick 3:30

And and and Becky, I you I just before we really launch into this discussion about the storm that happened to land in Missouri and surrounding states, you you also play a role with the AASHTO Committee on Maintenance.

Becky 3:46

I do. I've had the opportunity over the last decade to be very active, probably 11 years now, on the AASHTO Committee for Maintenance and started working my way up through those technical working groups, and then had the opportunity when a vice chair position opened up to take one of the vice chair positions. And it's just been an absolute delight to lead such a strong AASHTO committee. Looking at some of the results that we've done over the last seven or eight years, and the number of research projects and podcasts and meetings and webinars, it's just an amazing committee through a lot of very professional, talented folks that work in the DOTs that love to share their information and best practices. And I think I take away a lot more than I give to that committee for sure. It's just a daily basis talking to people from other states and being able to replicate not only their best practices, but things they have tried that didn't always go well, so that we don't repeat some of those errors as well.

Rick 4:55

Well, and and I think that's why probably the discussion that we're gonna have is so important because it's uh like you say, there's never a dull moment in maintenance. And and this is probably a perfect example. We were gonna talk about uh something completely different today, and and then as this conversation got started, it was like, hey, this pivot into the storm that happened to hit your region last year, um probably from a sharing point of view, is it's probably gonna be uh uh an outstanding uh uh episode to listen to, particularly because it seems like not not everything went down exactly according to plan. And and when things like that happen, it's like you don't get to to double back and say, oh, wait a second, um let's let's replay that and and do something a little bit differently. So uh to sort of to set the stage, we want to talk about uh a storm that hit the St. Louis Metro region December 1st of 2025. So it's very fresh in in everybody's mind. Tell us a little bit about set the stage for us.

Becky 6:13

I will. Um that was a weekend, and um throughout that weekend, this season in particular, in my opinion, all of the advanced prep that we did leading up to into this season was probably the best, most uh preparation we've ever done with different workshops with other state agencies and a couple of uh different workshops ahead of it because Missouri is in a unique situation this year where we have multiple major interstates that are under construction, just total rebuilds. And we had a legislature that had a little bit of extra COVID money over the last couple of years, and they knew that MODOT was a very trusted agency, and they have entrusted us to rebuild all of Interstate 70 across the state. That with some pretty big rebuilds of Interstate 55 right outside of the St. Louis district, and also starting to do some rebuilds of Interstate 44. So we back in October pulled a bunch of different agencies, EMS. Uh we met out at FEMA, we had National Weather Service there, we had tow truck agencies, fire agencies, uh, local law enforcement because we knew we had some very challenging locations to plow snow this year. And a couple of them in particular, just the phasing of the projects. We had some interstate mileage that had a chute or barrier wall on both sides. So 10-foot lanes with a barrier on both sides, nowhere for that snow to go. And then what do we do if there's a crash that happens in the chute? We were calling those the chute. So probably our best prep that we've ever done. We were proud. We were fully stocked with salt, the blades were good, our staffing's better than it had been in the last couple of years, and it was just the perfect storm. So just to set it up, we had a minor storm earlier in the weekend, so we were still actively had our emergency operations center going, but we always do those advanced calls 48 hours ahead of time, 24 hours ahead of time. We felt extremely prepared for this event, but leading up to the event, which happened on a Monday morning, nothing went as planned or as forecasted. So kind of the perfect storm of holy cow, what happened? We had forecasters that were apologizing for a missed forecast, and everybody across the entire St. Louis region was going off of the same forecast. Everybody went business as usual with the expectation that we had a PM rush storm coming in, and we had all day to prepare for it.

Rick 9:12

So, in addition to a challenging geometric environment, right, with all the construction and everything underway, uh the storm came in a bit earlier than expected.

Becky 9:24

Yeah, a good seven or eight hours earlier than expected.

Rick 9:28

And so what kind of storm was it?

Becky 9:31

It really, um when you look at the forecast and even uh throughout the day, it was not a difficult storm that we were expecting to come in. And we were expecting maybe three to four inches north of Interstate 70 and a little bit, maybe half an inch to an inch across the St. Louis district, and then a little south, um, maybe one to two inches, but not a challenging storm at all. Uh, we had a storm ahead of that, so lots of residual salt on the pavement. It just wasn't one that was really um capturing our attention as being a major, major winter storm. Um, we were expecting that there could be a couple of areas of snowburst, and those snowbursts they were expecting again to stay kind of in our northern half of the state or northern, probably even quarter of the state. So again, in Kansas City and St. Louis, we just were not concerned with this being a major storm, and neither was any of the public or any of the forecasters or anybody that was preparing for it.

Rick 10:36

Now, had you now had you had much um winter before this storm? You know, we we all say winter starts in October, right? But really it shows up when it decides to show up. Absolutely. In advance to like get your get in the routine and all that.

Becky 10:55

No, this was our first weekend of winter weather. So we had a major or a little minor skiff that came across that weekend. Uh Saturday, most of the day, and we had most of our crews that were out in 12-hour shifts over the weekend. So uh we even during our prep for this storm on December 1st, uh, we were doing situational awareness calls every six hours and preparing for this next storm that was coming in. So, as anybody in this industry knows, those first couple of storms, especially with challenges with staffing and challenges with new employees, it was absolutely the perfect storm of we had uh more than a quarter of our workforce or five to six hundred employees that were still doing their training. So the the training, the ride-alongs, um, you can pretty much count out a quarter of your workforce that are going to be riding with other operators, more experienced operators. And then we have always over the last couple of years had a deficit in operators. At one time it was um as much as almost a thousand operators. We were pretty feeling pretty good this year because we were down to that deficit only being about 500 operators. But you couple that with the 500 that needed ride-alongs, and you're a thousand down out of our 3,400 operators that we need for those two 12-hour shifts.

Rick 12:23

Right. Now, of course, the storm just doesn't materialize over St. Louis, right? It rolls in and it rolls out, and it covers a lot of the state. Were were were other areas within the state, did they get as much uh attention media-wise as the St. Louis area did?

Becky 12:43

Not nearly. The everything that was um you can never count on Mother Nature. And we have a really weird, I've worked in the St. Louis district in that area for 20 years, so I've seen it happen time and time again. And typically they call it the arch effect, but it's not really the arch that has anything to do with it. It really is the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and for some reason, that confluence of those two rivers does really weird things and probably the heat of uh a St. Louis metro area. Storms usually fall apart before they reach St. Louis. So you might be having a major storm that's marching across Interstate 70, and they usually peter out. So this was an interesting phenomena that not only did it not peter out, but it really intensified whenever it hit the St. Louis district. And we've all seen the phenomena as well. And we were looking at and watching the radars early that morning, very, very dry atmosphere. So we are seeing and watching the radars, and it looks like it's snowing. And the meteorologist, National Weather Service said, don't let that fool you. That's a lot of virga, it needs to saturate the atmosphere, and it'll probably be once you see it on the radar, another couple of hours before you actually see it falling from the sky. And that was spot-on forecast for the Kansas City District. I sit in the center of the state in Jefferson City. It looked like it should have been snowing to beat the band, and I'm looking out my window and there's nothing. But for some reason it accelerated after it hit uh mid-Missouri, and it did not. I mean, it did not have to saturate that air. It just fell from the sky and opened up big time over St. Louis.

Rick 14:37

Well, and and just again on this this this set the stage area, um, one of the things St. Louis has got working either for or against it is incredible amounts of traffic.

Becky 14:51

Absolutely. Absolutely. We have gridlock on a on a normal day with no precipitation. So add a little precipitation, and again, it's a setup for the perfect storm.

Rick 15:03

Yeah. So Becky, take us through a little bit of about what happened. I I before we get into like this, the after-action discussions about um how people perceived what happened. Um what what were the what were the sequence of events that sort of came came to play to get us to December 2nd?

Becky 15:27

Absolutely. That morning, um I do, and the leaders that are kind of paying attention to the radars and those decision makers on those agencies. We utilize National Weather Service and they have a very good service um through their Slack channel. And about 315, it's usually between 3 and 3.30, but that morning.

Rick 15:51

What's this? What's the Slack channel?

Becky 15:53

It is an op, it's it's kind of um, I I call it social media, but it's it's a channel that we can jump on with National Weather Service, and you have to sign up for it to kind of get the the inside scoop or the the inside baseball of what's happening. And it's typically on that Slack channel, they'll tell us 3:00-3:15, we're gonna have a broadcast. And that broadcast is the meteorologist from National Weather Service, and this was for the St. Louis region that I jumped on to, and typically you'll see meteorologists from the local news channels, you'll see uh school superintendents, you'll see cities, counties, EMS from across that region, and we are getting the latest forecast so that all those decision makers can make a decision at the same time. So we were all getting the exact same information. It was a plan stormed that for the St. Louis region they were expecting to hit evening rush hour. So the whole plan all along, you know, 4 to 6 p.m. is when this is going to hit St. Louis. We were expecting half an inch to an inch. So not a major storm by any means. And we had so much residual salt down, everybody's thinking this isn't gonna be that big of a deal. Um, as a DOT, we usually err on the side of caution, and we fully intended to err on the side of caution for this storm as well. Um, at about 3 15, everybody's making decisions. It's gonna be business as usual for this Monday morning.

Rick 17:30

So the so the Slack channel is a private sort of conversation with the meteorologists that sort of a backdoor um a back channel, if you will, so that you can get more up-to-date kinds of information. I that's good to know. I think that's that's important that you're you're just not relying on the news broadcasts that that happen at 10, 2, and 4, right?

Becky 17:56

Exactly. And it's it's an interesting market, media market too, because there isn't a forecaster that wants to be the outlier that gets the forecast wrong. So when you have all uh four or five major networks, meteorologists on there, and they're talking to National Weather Service, and they're all kind of seeing the same thing from the same models, um, they come out with a unified forecast as well. So there was not, there was not a forecast agency that morning that had a different opinion on what the forecast or the timing of that storm would be. Okay. So kind of important, everybody's made the decision to send their kids to school to go to work, to go to doctor's appointments, and we're not expecting anything till that evening. Okay. And then early that morning, yeah, and early that morning, um, that was the same thing. Um, we have seven districts across the state. So our seven districts, including our St. Louis district, were planning for that morning, and everything was coming in as forecast uh through the majority of the state. And St. Louis had made the decision. They had an eight o'clock conference call. We've already had crews that have been out for 12-hour shifts this weekend. Um, we need to give, um, since this will be coming in at night shift, they got a little time off on Sunday evening, but we need to make sure that our night shift is well rested so they can come in to hit the evening rush and then clean everything up during the evening hours. So they went ahead and made the decision, call, send evening shift home so they can get some sleep so they can report back at seven o'clock this evening. Go ahead and get day shift, um, which these are just our routine maintenance operators. Um, the other thing that we do to enhance or to help fill in the gap, we have a lot of operators that we call emergency equipment operators. So, those a lot of those are retired employees that come back to plow. That these are just operators who just come plow. So we have about 250 of those across the state. And then um, we don't like to have to do this, but we have non-maintenance employees that have to come plow as well. So these might be traffic engineers, it might be construction inspectors or signal electricians. Um, that morning, we know that the storm's gonna be coming in for rush hour. So all that additional help, they made the decision, bring them in at 11 a.m. Perfect. Um, from 8 to 11, we'll use routine maintenance, and they started putting down an application of brine. So getting out ahead of the storm. Uh, what we typically do in St. Louis because there's so much traffic, we will hit uh with that anti-icine or brine, we'll put a layer of brine down. Uh, we hit all of our routes that are not majors first, so buying a little time on those secondary routes, then we'll hit our major arterials, and then we always save those interstates for last. That way, the heavy traffic we get that treatment down as close to the start of the storm as possible. Had a great game plan.

Rick 21:06

Then and then reality shows up, right? It's like everybody has a plan until you get punched in the nose, right?

Becky 21:15

Exactly. Then Mother Nature changed her mind.

Rick 21:18

Okay.

Becky 21:19

So we're even um we had a statewide call at 9 a.m. that's that morning. So that's our opportunity. Let's hear about the game plan for each of the districts. See if anybody needs any additional resources sent their way. Um, we we here, just as statewide leaders, make sure nobody has a plan that doesn't seem to make sense. Everything was good to go, everybody was doing great. We were already seeing snow starting to fall in the Kansas City district and in our northwest district. So, very western side of the state, 200 miles away from St. Louis, we're starting to see snow. Um, during that call, that was Was when I'm looking on the radar in Jefferson City, yeah, you can kind of see the line of snow coming. Total verga. I did not see a flake flying. No reason to change game plan. This should be evening St. Louis. We're good to go with your plan. And it was very interesting, but about 45 minutes, 9.45, is when we started getting some bells and whistles going off, which we utilize DTN as one of our paid forecasters. And that's when we got our first alert that this might be coming in a little faster to the St. Louis district than we had originally forecast. And as soon as that hit from DTN, we had some of our other forecasters, National Weather Service, everybody's like, we're seeing it too. And that's when we got our first alert that, okay, we need to hurry up and get as much brine down as possible because the forecast is shifting.

Rick 22:59

Okay. And what time was that?

Becky 23:01

That was around 9.45. And that was because we were seeing, and we're still that storm was still probably 50 or 60 miles outside of St. Louis, but they're starting to see that atmosphere saturating sooner than it did on the western side of the state. And then after that, you start kind of shifting, and um sure enough, this half-inch to one inch storm, we started seeing some snowburst. It seemed like almost like clockwork the minute it hit that westernmost county that's in the St. Louis district, that's when we were starting to see some of the snowburst. And those snowbursts, of course, parked right over Interstate 70, right over those construction zones, right over Interstate 64, same thing. Worst place it possibly could have parked. And all of a sudden, within about an hour and a half, two hours, we were fully getting bursts that were dropping one and a half to two inches per hour.

Rick 24:09

Wow.

Becky 24:10

So totally different forecast. Yeah.

Rick 24:14

Yeah, and and you've got your crew situation, right? Because you're your the main body of your crew is not supposed to come in till 11, right?

Becky 24:22

Exactly.

Rick 24:23

I mean it's not like you can just call those guys and say, hey, show up and poof, they're instantly there, you know.

Becky 24:28

Yeah, or ex yeah, instantly on the road. Yeah, it was um not a fun situation for that uh poor St. Louis district needing to pivot very quickly.

Rick 24:40

Okay. Um but but they did get some they did get some pre-treatment down, is that right?

Becky 24:46

They got quite a bit of pre-treatment down, not enough pre-treatment down to combat one and a half to two inches an hour. So we did we did start to see um some situations and some pretty cold temperatures were coming in on the back side of that as well. It just the the treatment that was down could not keep up. It was a situation where we needed to be on those roadways uh with the plows down, just keeping everything cleared. The other um perfect storm that happened about this time, everybody across that St. Louis region, this was by now it was 11:30, 12 o'clock. It's the time where everybody's going out to lunch, but you had everybody that saw that amount of snow or this little burst of snow that came in that started to panic. So we instantly, there was no PM rush hour that day. The PM rush hour was accelerated where you normally have from about four to seven of a PM rush hour. That entire PM rush hour was pretty much from about 12 to 1 o'clock, and it was total gridlock on every single one of our interstates, and that's exactly where a lot of our plows were sitting in that gridlock.

Rick 26:00

Yeah. Now, was so that brings up an interesting, an interesting um topic, I think. When when folks decided to go home, was was that a decision that they made on their own? Was was did like did the schools release everybody? Um I I know that was uh one of the things that always used to you know complicate the situation. The schools would send everybody home. Well, that's great for the kids, but now all the parents have to get home uh to uh to meet their kids. And so um it sort of puts a this artificial peak out there in the in the middle of a significant event. And I I've always sort of wondered how those how the decisions get made. I I I mean I've I've sat in I've sat in your chair and you know the governor's office calls and says, Hey, we're thinking about sending all the state workers home. What do you think? It's like, well, you know, the roads are bad now, but they're not gonna be too bad at four o'clock. You know, maybe we should maybe we should wait. And and it's like, and the next thing you know, it's like all non-essential people get to go home right now, you know. So um sometimes sort of this shelter in place scenario is is better for for the kids, for the parents, for the, you know, because they're they're safe, right?

Becky 27:29

Exactly. And that you hit the nail on the head of what we wish, um, and this is we'll talk about after action in a little bit, some different ways we could communicate it, but because that snowburst came in, and then there was a total lull after that for a couple of hours before the majority or that that the core part of the storm that was supposed to hit PM Rush came in. So there were a lot of outside of the interstates and some of those expressways and arterials, those roads were completely clear. It was really easy to get plows in and around. And um, that if if those schools just would have waited an hour, hour and a half, those roads, those plows could have got through, it would have been crystal clear, smooth sailing to go home. But that was exactly first snow of the year, everybody panicked. And to be honest, you're releasing kids from school that a lot of those kids, that's the first time they're driving on snow. And just the even on our interstates, we kept having spin-outs. So you lose a lane, everything backs up. It just takes a long time to get the car cleared, to get the uh interstate open again, to get traffic flowing. So it really was. It was people backed up on those interstates without any way to get around that.

Rick 28:51

So so after the storm, there's uh there's always the um the after-action, right? Can you talk about that a little bit? What how first of all, you know, uh good after action reports, right, always bring all the stakeholders together, and you know, we talk about uh potential gaps and and uh communication seems to be always come to the top of the list in after actions. Um talk a little bit about your after-action process for this story.

Becky 29:26

This one, um you would appreciate this. Um it's we were getting ready to start the legislative session, pretty much. So legislators were starting to stop talk about budget processes and what um things we're gonna have to do or cut. So everything that a state or government agency does is under high scrutiny when the legislation's in session. So instantly, if you have a legislator that is stuck in that traffic, because I want to remind everybody this is a Monday. And Monday afternoon is usually when the legislators start heading to Jefferson City. So again, perfect storm. That afternoon, we had a lot of legislators that were on the interstates heading to Jefferson City, and quite a few that got stuck in the traffic that day. So very, very high level of scrutiny with the performance and the results of that storm. So we have several things that are happening all at once with that storm. And what really precipitated, I want to say, called to the carpet, uh, we had about eight legislators, senators, and state reps that instantly fired off a letter to my state commission or to our highway commissioners uh demanding action. You failed, figure out what happened. We want accountability, we want to know what happened. So I had the opportunity, our uh chairman of our commission, uh, we put together and we talked to him on the phone several times. Here's exactly what happened. This is to be expected this time of year, first storm of the year, uh, still doing training. There was scrutiny even to the point of why in the world am I seeing two people in a snow plow? What a waste. Those should they should have been in separate snow plows, just not understanding the situation. Um, on the back side of this, I have our poor representative from National Weather Service feels horrible about the situation and blesses heart, writes a letter saying this was a forecast that was off. And I would defend him to the end of the earth to say, we are dealing with Mother Nature, you did not do anything wrong. Everybody was reading the same models. But he sent a letter to the legislators and to our commission and just across the state to all the news channels saying this was on us. This was not the state DOT, this was not any of the local DOTs. We were off on our forecast, took full responsibility for it. I will still defend him to this day because he's a great partner, but that that didn't matter. That didn't matter to the legislators. And the big thing that we are always, always scrutinized on is that uh, and everybody wants to call it pre-treat. I call it the treatment ahead of the storm. Um, they just want to talk about why didn't Modot pretreat ahead of the storm, not understanding that in most cases we did. It's just a snowburst is more than that pre-treat or that treatment ahead of the storm could take.

Rick 32:37

Yeah, because there was a lot of there was a lot of press. Um, I was just scanning some of the old newspaper articles, and it's like that's all they could talk about was why didn't you guys get out there and pretreat? But it sounds like you had a pretty decent plan and you were on top of it.

Becky 32:54

Yeah. And I tell you, Rick, what we didn't, what we weren't able to do. We had a good plan and we were on top of it. When that snow came in, we did not get that that layer of brine down ahead on the interstates. That's why every other road, why in the world would they not we were saving them for last because of the high volumes of traffic? That's just something we do. And to be honest, our plan was to have that that uh brine down four to six hours before the storm started. So it's yeah, in hindsight, we might kind of err and push that even an extra couple of hours next time, but that's that's exactly what happened, and that's what people just don't understand.

Rick 33:37

Okay. All right, interesting, interesting. Uh and I, you know, it makes absolutely perfect sense uh to to sequence it that way. Um but you know, hitting the beginning of the storm, that that's a that's a tough call.

Becky 33:52

It is.

Rick 33:53

You know, even I I think way back into the old SHRP days, the the target was two hours before the onset of precipitation. And um, you know, that's that was a real hard target to hit.

Becky 34:06

It is.

Rick 34:07

And and it wasn't until we understood more about uh how it's working and and that sort of thing that that you do have a little bit of a little bit of time to work there. So um kudos to the National Weather Service forecaster. Usually um people want to want to try to you know cover themselves, if you will, and and um but uh my experience is if if uh things didn't go quite right, the best thing to do is is just say, hey, they didn't go according to plan, and here's what we're gonna do next. So so how did how did that play out?

Becky 34:46

Um that's exactly right. Um I will tell anybody in a leadership position for winter ops, stay off social media after a storm. I had all the biggest fans, my feelings were hurt. It just wasn't uh let me lick my wounds. You're right. The the response to this storm, especially with it being the first storm, is not what we would have uh wanted as well. Um wasn't for lack of effort, wasn't for lack of planning, but when you're dealing with Mother Nature, sometimes she doesn't cooperate. I think the thing that I had the opportunity to do, uh the chairman of our commission wanted to personally script a letter to those legislators that called us to the carpet. So we did an after action over the next couple of days, just what would we do different? I'm not sure there was a whole lot we would have done different based on the forecast, but one of the biggest things that uh we wanted to do was be able to communicate a little bit better ahead of the storm. And we think if we could have communicated a little bit better ahead of the storm, and this is full transparency, uh we know this is expected to be a light storm, but this is one of our first storms of the season. You will see uh employees and operators doubled up in plow trucks, they're still in training. Uh right now we are only at 64% staffing because of those employees that needed to be trained. Even after those employees are trained, we're only up to 86%. But it's it's going to be a little bit of a delayed response. Please plan accordingly. The other thing that we really would have hit, especially on social media, because we are looking at very much a different response on the Kansas City side of the state to the St. Louis side of the state. And we have a new younger generation of communication specialists on the Kansas City side of the state. And those communications specialists are so good at social media. So this is more of a meeting our public and the traveling public where they are, and that's where they're getting a lot of their information in the middle of a snowstorm if they're stuck in traffic or if they're trying to make decisions on whether to go or not. Um, we have a very robust traveler information map that helps make decisions, but for some reason, even some of our humorous posts on uh go get your milk, bread, eggs, whatever it is. Um, we make French toast videos, you name it, that Kansas City site has really figured out how to communicate, especially to the younger generation. We have beefed that up and replicated that across the state, more social media post, even some of the social media avenues that we historically hadn't done. And our message that day would have been stay home, give us an hour, hour and a half, do not leave right now. Uh, if you can delay it, we'll have those roads clear for your evening commute.

Rick 37:50

So But that's so hard. You're you know, because back to the forecast, right? You're looking at uh uh an inch or two, right? It's it's a bread and butter kind of uh you know storm. It's like it's what it's what you do, it should be no big deal. Um because the other side is uh what happens if you call people off and say, hey, don't don't go into work, don't go into work today, and the forecast holds true, and it's not a problem until the commute time, right? So you lose confidence in in um your your source of information. So it's it's kind of a double-edged sword. It's like you you want to you want to give them the best information that you can, but by the same token, you can't overplay your hand or else they won't pay attention to you the next time.

Becky 38:38

Yeah, you're exactly right. And that we did end up um at Lambert Airport that day, we got almost four inches of snow total. And that was a new record for the first day of meteorological winter. Uh it was a record-setting storm. Even four inches, it doesn't seem record setting, but when you're expecting half an inch to an inch, it's right, it's set records in my book.

Rick 39:01

And you know, there's there's a relationship between the amount of traffic and the inches of storm, right? It's like you can take more inches of storm if you don't have much traffic, but when you have a lot of traffic, it don't doesn't take many inches of storm to cause havoc.

Becky 39:14

Exactly.

Rick 39:16

So so there's uh communication with with your your customers, if you will, with the motorists. Um the social media avenue. I I have to confess, when I'm stuck in traffic, you're not supposed to you know use your phone when you're behind the wheel, but I have to I have to confess, sometimes you're looking at those social media fees of try to figure out what the heck's going on. Exactly. The um what about from an operations point of view? Did anything come out of the after action uh on the operations front?

Becky 39:49

Kind of kind of funny, and I feel I feel for those St. Louis operators and those leaders. Um we did, like I said, after we did our after action, our our the chair of our commission put a bunch of that in writing back to those legislators. I'll tell you operationally, one of the best things that I got the opportunity at our next commission meeting, uh the chair of the commission sent a personal invitation to those legislators to come watch the presentation. So I got to give a presentation uh a month later, just saying, here's what our actions were, here's what exacerbated the situation, and here's our planning process, and here's what we'll do differently next time. So that was refreshing. Um I was pleased to really sing the praises of our crews and our leaderships and the decision and the planning this year. Um I was very disappointed, kind of disappointed, kind of not. I kind of expected it, but not a single legislator showed up. Um we're hoping on the backside that maybe they watched it, but the thing that um has been really helpful, we have our planning calls ahead of those storms. So we have one 48 hours ahead of each storm and then one 24 hours ahead of the storm. And we open that up to we usually have SEMA, Missouri State Highway Patrol, we um have local EMS, anybody that wants to listen in on our planning calls, we absolutely allow that. So, not unusual on some of those calls to have 400 people, especially on a large storm. We invited those legislators to listen in. We are fully transparent. I think a couple of them were expecting that we're just checking the box here in a forecast, not really doing anything. But it was some of the best planning calls after that event. We really ramped up our game and operationally talking about things that um it's St. Louis and Kansas City in particular, where any weekend you're gonna have major sporting events or uh different car shows, you name it. Uh, the crew has really stepped up on those calls where we knew legislators were gonna be on there talking about events. Here's our course of action. And that poor St. Louis crew, I think they were afraid to not treat. So there's some storms. I was not gonna stop them from doing it, but I'm like, why in the world are you putting Brian out ahead of that storm? I don't blame them. Yeah. We made sure they were out there, they were visible. Um, for the most part, uh, most of the media, social media, the public were singing their praises. Um, we did have the naysayers, probably about a quarter of them. Why in the world are they wasting money? And then people would jump to their defense. Do you blame them?

Rick 42:35

Right, right.

Becky 42:37

So operationally, um, that crew in particular, St. Louis District, they are really erring on the side of caution. And the end of the year, I'm looking at some of their brine totals. Whew, I'm okay with it. The brine's cheap, but they were buying back some uh political acumen for sure.

Rick 42:57

Yeah, well, and and you know, you you can't hardly blame them for that. And and it'll take a while generationally and experience and intuition to to sort of get back on your feet, you know. I uh everybody that's been in an operations role, I think, has has faced something like this. Yeah, uh, maybe not to the magnitude or or maybe maybe greater, you know. Think of some of the other storms that could have hit the the east coast and so on. Um but I uh you know, uh takeaways. What would what would you say, what what advice would you give uh to your peers out there when when you've gone through one of these events and and uh you want to you want to give them some nuggets of advice for when it happens to them?

Becky 43:46

I've um I've been through this situation so many times in my career, and this one really did feel different. And now that I'm in a position that I want to say the leader of the leaders, but I'm not the state maintenance engineer. Anymore. That as a leader on the executive team, this one felt very different. And I've been in that role even in the St. Louis district as a district maintenance engineer when a storm didn't go as planned. And I've had leaders that have come down and said, you are going to get on TV and said, we dropped the ball, even when it didn't happen. And this one, being a leader that's come up through this organization, I was not going to do that to any of my operators. I don't think planning wise, they did everything right. There is not anything big. Yes, we can continue to improve on every storm, but don't take this personal. That's everything that you hear from the public, from the don't watch TV because it's it's absolutely going to bring you down a notch or knock your wind out of your sails. You did nothing wrong. We made good decisions. We'll continue to improve. Communication is absolutely the key. But the thing that even when I had the opportunity a month later to do that presentation for the commission, we recorded that presentation to make sure that every single one of those leaders in the field and the boots in the ground got to see that I was absolutely singing their praises. I took every bit of ownership for that storm, and that's what a good leader should do. These are some of my decisions. I there was nothing I think they should have done differently. I didn't change their course of action. You can put that on my shoulders if you think they should have done something different, but let's praise these heroes that are out there on these very difficult storms. That's the thing that a good leader really should do. And I've learned that through the years. Some of my own mistakes, but I've had some leaders that I didn't think I was going to come back the next day that your email was going to get turned off, right? Exactly. Exactly. I had to go home and eat a half gallon of ice cream and lick my wounds and go, all right, I can do this. But I that's just as leaders. That's especially when you know your cruiser, you give them the tools they need, you give them the resources they need to really tackle these storms. We're in a situation across the country where you can't really fill that gap of the needed operators. You just need to over-communicate that to the public as well. The public will kind of understand. I don't want to say uh you get what you pay for, but you get the investment that you make into transportation. In Missouri, in particular, we are ranked uh 47th, 48th in the nation for funding per lane mile. So we we point that out often. This is we absolutely could do a higher level of service if we had all the resources that we needed, but communicating that to the public so they have a realistic expectation of our response to the storm. Highly, highly recommend that as proactively as you can. Here's the forecast, here's what we're expecting. We let National Weather Service say all that harsh language that uh this is catastrophic, you could be trapped out there for days, and I follow up by saying we got every resource out there.

Rick 47:08

Yeah, yeah. Well, and so often people people they were they were there was uh an inconvenience, things didn't go according to plan. They want to place the blame someplace. And um, you know, dealing dealing with the media is uh tough because uh our story our story is more than a sound bite, you know. Um and I've been in front of the camera before and and you're explaining you're not making excuses, you're just this is what happened. This these are the facts, right? We're not making an excuse, it's just the facts. And and you end up with a 10-second sound bite that says, okay, we didn't pre-treat, which gives the implication that no pretreatment was put down anywhere. And and in fact, that's not the case. And once you get behind the curve, once you get behind that media curve, you you'll never dig you never dig out.

Becky 48:06

Yep, you're exactly right. And that is another very important point because for this storm across the board, uh, we had some, we have some really tough media anyway, especially in that St. Louis market. But we had a couple of leaders that did exactly. I'm like, here's the things that you never say, the questions you don't have to answer. And that was exactly right. We had one St. Louis leader that mentioned pre-treat, and we didn't get, we did not get to pre-treating the interstates. That wasn't the whole story, but that was the sound bite that was picked out. We had another leader on the Kansas City side that they asked him to rate. What letter grade would you give? And he goes on to explain well, at the start of the storm, I'd give it a D minus, but we quickly shifted, and really the response was an A, they pulled out the soundbite of uh I give ourselves a D minus. It's like, don't ever do that.

Rick 49:00

Yeah, well, and you know, these these folks, they're they're as honest as the day is long, right? You you ask them a question and they're gonna give you the answer the way that they absolutely and it doesn't it doesn't fit that soundbite mold. Um I think quite honestly, this this idea of social media, even though it cuts hard one way, can I think can really give some benefit the other because you're speaking directly to folks behind their smartphone. It's not being filtered through uh a public market or uh a media, somebody that's controlling the media narrative. Uh you get to sort of control your own thing. Uh I think we need to need to get better at handling things that way.

Becky 49:45

Yes, and it's very interesting. We always tell our employees on social media don't respond. Uh really don't respond if you've identified yourself as a Modot worker. But it is impossible to keep people's spouses, children, mothers from responding. And it is so entertaining to watch because I got to watch my mom. My mom will defend Modot to the hilt. But even when something very negative on social media pops up, uh, there is a loved one that pops on that says, you don't understand the dedication of my husband, my wife, my daughter through this storm that just worked three 12-hour shifts in a row. It's and then that really seems to shift the tone. And really the next couple of storms after what was perceived as a rough storm, with some of those loved ones responding, it just really softened the tone of the next couple of storms. And we had a storm in January that we had more than a foot of snow through most of the state. And the response was so I would have said our response was a little more rough. Took us longer to clear the roads, but we were heroes after that storm, after people more understood what happened in that first storm.

Rick 51:01

So it was it's it's easy to pick on Modot, right? It's it's a plow, it's a organization, it's a building, right? No, it's it's thousands of people that are out there uh you know in the worst possible condition.

Becky 51:18

Absolutely.

Rick 51:19

When other people are looking at the snow come, you know, falling through their picture window and and uh considering going to the movies or whatever, these these folks are out there putting in long hours and plows. So getting getting a social media person that's really savvy, you know, boy, they can they can really they can really give you some benefit.

Becky 51:38

Absolutely.

Rick 51:40

Becky, I think this has been a great conversation. It's it's always it's always tough having that uh afterwards when you get beat up a little bit, and and um but I think it's good to share that experience because every everybody's going to uh at some point in their career are gonna have to deal with it.

Becky 52:00

I agree. And it was it's one of those situations that um I I see it across social media and through national news, and when you see another state going through it, and it was so odd that this storm in December, it's not one of those storms where we had a 30-car pileup. It it just wasn't a catastrophic response. It was just everybody was delayed a little bit, and we had a couple spin outs. So it's you never know what's gonna be or get ginned up as one of those things. I have always said this: I'd rather have a foot and a half, two feet of snow than an inch and a half to two inches any day with the expectations of the public. But um, just keep your head up, take full responsibility for it whenever it does happen, and people's memories are pretty short, usually on the back side of the storm. And uh I feel for it when I see it, but seeing some really good leadership across the country uh with a lot of our our winter states and snow states, and proud to be associated with a lot of them that can commiserate with the situation that we had.

Rick 53:08

Becky, thanks so much for joining us and and uh sharing, bearing all, if you will, and sharing what happened. Love to appreciate it. If you like this episode, don't keep it a secret. Share it with your friends and co-workers. While you're at it, go ahead and click subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. It really does help. You can also sign up to get all the Talkin' Winter Ops news directly to your inbox by clicking on subscribe in our podcast website, talkingwinterops.com. Sign up today so you can get all the news firsthand. I'm your host, Rick Nelson. Until next time, thanks for tuning in and stay safe out there.