Winter weather preparations underway in Wisconsin

 

WISCONSIN (CBS 58) -- Winter weather preparations are underway in Wisconsin Friday night.

That includes Public Works departments gearing up. The Waukesha Department of Public Works is prepping for 1-3 inches.

They're sending 53 of their trucks out. Because of COVID-19, they will only have one person in each one of their vehicles.

They want to remind people to keep a 200-foot distance from trucks, reduce your speed around them and try to avoid passing.

This is also the first opportunity of the year for private businesses to make some money with snow removal.

Paul Terry, of Paul Terry, LLC  said his company is revving things up for the season.

"Just hope that everything goes smoothly. I don't expect any great amount of snow. Just getting our feet wet and going out and clearing out the, basically the business properties that we have."

Waukesha Public Works says they started sending their trucks out at 7 p.m. Friday night and they will stay out through 11 a.m. Saturday.

And in Hartford, residents are out making weather-related purchases.

Local hardware store workers say the rush was on even before snow hit the ground.

"From like 10ish until about 3-4ish this afternoon we had a lot of people in with salt, sand and snowblowers in at that time," said Wyatt Nicolaus, sales associate at Hahn Ace Hardware. 

The city of Milwaukee says its crews are ready to go. DPW says city workers will be on standby overnight and into Saturday.

More than 100 salt trucks will hit the roads if conditions call for it.