00:00This is kind of the calm before the storm, Mike.
00:05I don't know if it's calm. It might be a little more frantic than calm. But, you know, I made my
00:10rounds this morning to the grocery stores, the department stores, hardware stores, just to see
00:15what preparations were being made. And fortunately, you know, I'm seeing a lot of people taking this
00:19seriously, a lot of people buying those last minute items, a lot of firewood, the snow shovels.
00:25You can't find a snow shovel in this town. The manager of a hardware store told me they had a
00:29shipment of snow shovels showing up at 1 p.m. today. And I told him not to count on it because
00:33if it's coming in from the west, it is mayhem here on Interstate 40, westbound through the state
00:38into Oklahoma. It's a mess in Oklahoma right now. And that's headed our direction here with the
00:43leading edge of that sleet, maybe even some thundersleet, just about 20 miles west of the
00:47Little Rock Metro here. All right, Mike. So looking at the roads behind you, for the most part,
00:52everything looks fairly good. How has the Arkansas Department of Transportation
00:56been treating the roads for the impending storm?
01:02Well, you know, on the interstates, on the major interstates, this is Interstate 630 here. I'm just
01:06on the south side of downtown, north side of downtown. Sorry, I'm turned around. It's there.
01:12You've got those stripes of pretreatment that they lay down on the interstates and on the main roads
01:17here in the city off of the interstates. There hasn't been a lot of preps done. I haven't seen
01:21a lot of salt or sand in those. The intersections are on those trouble spots yet. So as far as
01:29businesses go, there are a lot of people pretreating, a lot of sand, a lot of salt in the
01:34parking lots and whatnot. But here on the city streets, I have not seen a lot of preparations
01:37made. But on the interstates, that pretreatment's down and they're just waiting for it to start.
01:42You know, Mike, one of the reasons that we're really watching Little Rock especially is because
01:46the amount of snow that's forecasted is more than Little Rock really gets in a season, let alone one
01:52single winter storm. So it's good to hear it sounds like people are taking this seriously
01:57and trying to prepare. Absolutely. And, you know, we could, you know, while we can have some fun
02:06with it, the kids are watching for the potential double snow day, four-day weekend here if they
02:11get some significant snow. So, you know, the kid inside of me is excited for them for that. And
02:15there are also no sleds to be found at any of the stores. So there are some kids out there hoping
02:20that this overperforms. You know, 6.4 inches is the most snow they've had in a 24-hour period
02:26in 40-plus years. So, you know, a big storm on the way. How much of that is sleet and how much
02:32of that is snow remains to be seen. But we're prepared and we're ready for it here. All right.
02:36So it sounds like the serious preparation and the fun preparation are both covered. Storm chaser
02:42Mike Scanlon, thanks for joining us. We'll check back in with you a little bit later.
Comments