Interesting Weather Decisions

The Kosciusko County Commissioners decision to not put our county in the red for travel conditions last Thursday caused a lot of negative posts and comments on social media.  Residents of the county wanted a travel emergency called, but the Commissioners kept it in yellow even after we received a foot of snow.  Their argument was that they didn't want to force people off of the roads if they wanted to be out in the storm and they didn't want to close businesses.  The backlash only grew after after they closed the county government offices due to weather conditions.  Our county's response to heavy snow has always been slow, so I wasn't really surprised by their lack of concern for travel alerts.  In all honesty I didn't really pay too much attention to it as I wasn't really going anywhere.   

Last night I realized that several schools in our area had called two hour delays.  I was surprised by that until I read several posts by friends of mine that were teachers.  They had been out and the roads were still awful.  They stated that the county decided to give the snowplow drivers the day off on Sunday.  The weather that day was warm enough to start melting the snow, so the roads were packed with slush.  It would have been nice to have the plows running to get the snow off of the roads when it was warm enough to move it.  The county must not have agreed.  We actually hadn't seen a plow on our street since Friday morning.  

Cameron had told us several times that this wasn't the case in Elkhart County.  Their roads were completely clear.  In fact he took a picture of County Road 29 on the way home Saturday to show Grandma Jane.  It was snowflake free and easily drivable.  Today, I was able to witness the difference between the two counties responses myself as I had to run to Goshen to drop something off at Bethany and then drive to Warsaw to pick up something at Kohl's.  The roads in and out of Syracuse were terrible.  Once I got to the county line on CR 29, it was completely clear.  In Syracuse, I could barely make it over the railroad track due to the ice and snow build up, but in Goshen it was not an issue.  I definitely wasn't surprised by the difference, but I was disappointed in our county's response.  There was no excuse to have today's poor road conditions since the storm ended four days ago.  I realized, however, that the county would not care what my opinion was.  We've lived here for almost 24 years and it's no different than the first winter that our first winter in Syracuse.  It won't change even if we live here another twenty-four.