$3.5M went to Lexington’s snow plan after 2025 storm. Why was the result the same?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- City budgeted $3.5M for winter staffing, trucks and supplies.
- Ice-snow mix and prolonged subfreezing temps reduced plow effectiveness.
- City plans a new ice-focused strategy; contractors were more productive.
Early this week, Lexington had used 4,600 tons of salt and 19,000 gallons of beet heat, and had paid 170 employees driving 70 vehicles over 10,000 hours to attempt to clear the 5.5 inches of snow and 1.78 inches of ice left by Winter Storm Fern.
The result: Residents have complained frequently about road conditions being lackluster, Fayette County Public Schools have spent nearly two full weeks with campuses closed, and Gov. Andy Beshear has gone so far as to express disappointment with the city’s efforts to address the problem.
Following the significant Winter Storm Blair in 2025, which left similar effects on Lexington, the city allocated $3.5 million in this fiscal year’s budget for what they hoped would be a more effective response than last year.
The outcome has seemed largely the same.
How Lexington changed its snow plan
As Winter Storm Blair bested the city’s weather plan, Lexington spent an unexpected $2 million in January and February 2025 on equipment and contractors for a type of storm they had not seen in many years: one that involved not just snow, and not just ice, but a mixture of both that created thick, stubbornly-packed patches of ice-infused-snow impervious to snow plows.
Temperatures following Winter Storm Blair stayed below freezing for weeks, meaning the city couldn’t rely on snow and ice naturally melting within a matter of days as temperatures rise, which happens in most winter storms.
Just like in this year’s response to Winter Storm Fern, many Lexington residents were left wondering why their neighborhood streets had not been plowed.
Lexington officials have pointed to the prolonged freezing temperatures as being a big part of the problem. Warmer temperatures naturally clear neighborhood streets soon after most winter storms, leaving city crews to focus on major roadways.
But officials told residents soon after Winter Storm Blair they had learned some valuable lessons, which is why $3.5 million was allocated in this fiscal year’s budget specifically for winter weather staffing and equipment.
The city made sure to get a map of bus routes from FCPS to fold into snow plow routes.
The city’s previous ranked road approach — where snow plow drivers would exclusively clear Rank 1 roads in Lexington, then proceed to clearing all Rank 2 roads, and so on down the rank system — was replaced with a route system where drivers were responsible for plowing all ranked roads in a given area in hopes that more roads would be cleared faster.
Staff in city divisions who do not typically respond to weather emergencies, such as those in parks and recreation and water quality, were trained to drive snow plows in case another major storm necessitated an all-hands-on-deck response.
The city, which typically keeps about 8,000 tons of salt on hand before each winter season, budgeted money to purchase an additional 11,500 tons if needed.
Historically the city has relied on just salt and beet heat, a chemical that boosts salt’s effectiveness in low temperatures for winter weather.
After Blair, the city purchased new tanker trucks to begin using more liquid treatments, like mixing beet heat with salt brine, for use on top of snow and ice. Those liquid treatments have proven more effective in recent years across other cities, according to Nancy Albright, the city’s commissioner of environmental quality and public works.
Despite those changes, Winter Storm Fern proved more than Lexington was prepared for.
‘You cannot just push ice’
City staff began pretreating roads 72 hours before Winter Storm Fern hit the commonwealth on Jan. 24, Albright said. They used a mixture of brine and beet heat to help keep accumulating snow from sticking to the roads. All ranked roads, as well as certain hills and bridges that are known to cause safety issues in winter weather, were pretreated.
Once the storm hit, trucks began dumping salt, followed by a liquid layer of beet heat and brine on top. Trucks often dump these materials from the back as they are plowing streets. A full crew of drivers were ready as soon as snowfall began Saturday, Albright said.
“The general way a plow would work is, you break (snow) up by salting, and then you let traffic kind of break it up, and then you come through and you push it off the road,” Albright told the Herald-Leader.
But after snow fell on Jan. 24 and Jan. 25, the night into Jan. 26 brought more ice and sleet than expected. That ice created a firm shield atop the snow, and water trickled within the accumulated snowfall to create compact frozen sheets several inches thick.
“You cannot just push ice, as we learned last year,” Albright said during a Tuesday Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council meeting. “We’re unfortunately continuing to that learn this year.”
It only got worse from there. Salt is not very effective below 20 degrees, and temperatures lower than that hit the area as early as Jan. 25. Lexington didn’t see temperatures above 32 degrees until Feb. 3. Beet heat helps, but it cannot get salt to full effectiveness at such low temperatures.
Getting at least one lane clear on Rank 1, 2, and 3 roads was the first priority, Albright said. Drivers would treat and plow the same roads over and over again, keeping ice just loose enough from the roads to be scraped off the road by plows.
“We probably were able to prevent some of this hard-pack bonding on those main roads, because we were able to focus on those earlier in the storm,” she said.
Even as the emphasis on major roads early in the storm made them easier to clear, the attention spent there gave ice sheets on neighborhood streets more time to harden. Salt, brine and beet heat are much less effective when applied on top of an already solidified sheet.
“The side roads, with the super-cold and after melting and refreezing, that ice is almost embedded in the road at this point,” Albright told the Herald-Leader.
One construction company was hired on Jan. 26 to use construction vehicles with movable front-end blades to bash sheets of ice into pieces that could be scooped off roadways, either by those trucks or by plows that can handle many pieces of ice much easier than one large sheet.
The city brought on two additional contractors to do more of the same on Jan. 30.
That addition was more productive, Albright said.
A new snow, ice plan is coming for Lexington
Lexington’s $3.5 million investment in new trucks, more salt, and more drivers was a plan that could have addressed snow adequately. It may have addressed ice adequately if temperatures had warmed earlier, city officials said.
“Those are tools we know that work,” Albright said, “and so the inclination to make sure we had more of that available was where we started.”
But the strategy of larger investments into materials the city has always relied on may have been a mismatch for the type of ice and snow duo that Blair and Fern brought.
Mayor Linda Gorton has acknowledged that preparing for ice needs to be a major focus for the city going forward.
“We need to look at a totally different strategic plan for our weather response … these two-in-a-row ice storms are killers,” Gorton said in a Tuesday meeting of the Urban County Council. “They immobilize us.”
Officials have said that once roads are finally clear of ice, they will create a new plan for the city’s winter-preparedness.
