I visited Telford Council’s gritter nerve centre as Storm Goretti threatens significant snow and a crucial decision to keep the roads safe was made
As weather forecasters warn of a possibly significant dumping of snow on Thursday night I paid a visit to Telford’s gritter HQ.
Telford & Wrekin Council’s decision making centre at Granville House, in Donnington, has an array of screens including a weather radar map, and data on the state of the borough’s 1,000 kilometres of roads.
While forecasts for Thursday night for Storm Goretti are still uncertain about the times of any snow and ice formation the team of local drivers from contractors Balfour Beatty are on standby for any late updates. It currently shows ice, frost, snow, heavy rain with times still uncertain.
Weather forecasts from MetDesk – a private company – can be updated but the night drivers will be ready even if they are phoned up at 2am and told to get out on the roads.
I was there at midday on Tuesday when the latest MetDesk forecast landed and the key official made the decision to send out the nine gritters on eight routes. Recent decisions have been pretty clear cut to send the vehicles out but when information is more marginal they say they will err on the side of caution.
So far this winter, the gritters have spread an impressive 1,300 tonnes of salt with 630 tonnes of that used since Friday.
For decision-maker Lewis Elliott, a council winter duty officer, it was a question of when, not if the gritters would be sent out to cover the 400km of borough council roads.
