The worst of the winter storm might be over but Butler County road crews still hard at work

The heavy lifting was already done but road crews in Butler County were out Thursday attempting to take care of any remaining slick spots from the winter storm that dropped multiple inches of snow across the Tri-State.

Dan Pennington was getting back into his truck at the Butler County Engineer's Office on Thursday after spending more than 12 hours on the job the day before.

"It was steady pretty much through the morning and it let up in the afternoon got a lot of  snow removed," Pennington said. "But it came down so heavy and so fast in the morning that we never really got caught up so we had to work a shift overnight to continue to clean the roads."

There really wasn't much snow left for Pennington and his crew mates to remove Thursday but that didn't mean the work was done.            

"Out there there are a lot of gore areas -- turn lanes that we refer to as a suicide lane -- that ... need additional material applied to them, maybe a little bit of plowing," Pennington said.

It can be a real balancing act for these road departments during the wintertime. They don't want to overuse salt or chemicals because if they have to order more that means they won't have as much money to fix the roads during the summer.

Greg Wilkens, the county's engineer, said his crews did a job battling the snow Wednesday. He had an additional piece of advice for everyone else.
              
"I haven't heard anyone complain ... so that's always good," he said. "We've got a dedicated crew they're very dedicated in this. The one statement I always want to bring out is give them the latitude to do their job."

While it might not have seemed like a major storm, Wilkens said the storm now being referred to as Euclid was serious business.

"As snowfall goes, as winter storms go,  was that a pretty descent one yesterday? Yeah, it was pretty descent," Wilkens said. "I've been here 16 years and I've seen worse but that's first time I've been here that I've heard the word blizzard mentioned I can remember back in '77-'78 those winters."