It’s 3:15 p.m. Sunday, and the snow is coming down hard. The National Weather Service is predicting 3-7 inches by tomorrow.

Ed Capper is at the wheel of his International tandem dump truck with plows attached. The PennDOT worker would normally be off today, but supervisors called him in at 10 a.m. to work the storm. If the snow keeps falling, he could remain on the road until midnight, when the next shift will take over.

He doesn’t mind.

“I really enjoy it,” he says as he plows the driving lane of eastbound Interstate 80 between Buckhorn and the Montour County line. “It’s exciting! It’s like being in a battle. And I feel like I’m making a difference for the public.”

He slows as he gets stuck behind a car crawling along the highway.

“Even though the public is sometimes a hinderance.”

Living the dream

When the snow gets deep, the local maintenance office of PennDOT clears 1,098 snow lane miles of roads in Columbia County with 29 trucks and drivers.

A snow-lane mile counts the miles of road times the number of lanes. So a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 80, which has four lanes, would equal 40 snow miles.

In Montour County, the department clears another 386 snow lane miles, though 14 of those are handled by local municipalities by agreement.

It’s a process supervisors start planning every spring, says spokeswoman Maggie Baker. The department began receiving the salt and other materials in August, and started training new operators in September.

For Capper, it’s a dream come true.

He used to work as a nuclear

engineer at the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Salem Township. But he always wanted to drive big trucks. So the 59-year-old Berwick man says he took an early retirement and got a job at PennDOT five years ago.

Now he’s driving one of the biggest trucks on the road.

The Internationals weigh in at 25,690 to 25,900 pounds. When fully loaded with all equipment, brine and salt, they can reach 73,280 pounds. They tower about 10-and-a-half feet high.

In addition to its front plow, it has two wing plows, one on each side. When fully extended, they let him plow both lanes of the highway in a single sweep.

But he does that only in the worst of storms, when he can’t keep up with the snowfall any other way.

It’s dangerous, explained Steve Long, assistant county highway maintenance manager earlier. Other motorists don’t see the wings and try to pass. So a second truck has to shadow the plow and block would-be passers.

Tons of salt

Today, Capper is plowing only one lane at a time. He uses a single wing to clear the shoulder as he drives back and forth along the 10 miles between Lime Ridge and the Montour County line.

By the end of the night, he says, he’ll likely have driven 400 miles.

Each time he completes a pass, he has to stop and balance on the top step of the truck to knock the ice off his windshield wipers.

But he’s keeping up. As he plows the white snow from the driving lane, the passing lane, which he plowed on his last circuit, is still black.

There’s some science behind his success. The road still has anti-icing brine — salty water — left over from Thursday’s storm, Long said. The salt lowers the temperature at which water freezes, making it take longer to bind to the road — or even prevent it from sticking altogether.

Capper is spreading more salt as he plows. Before it leaves the truck, the salt gets a quick spray of more brine. That activates it so it works more quickly, Long explained; otherwise, it would have to wait to absorb water from the air or roadway.

The two counties use a lot of salt — last year, Columbia County went through 3,735 tons of salt and 72,697 gallons of brine, Long said. That’s well over the amount that would fill an Olympic swimming pool.

Montour County went through 1,539 tons of salt, and 30,776 gallons of brine.

And that was during an unusually unsnowy winter.

“It was good winter,” said Long.

“It was very disappointing,” Capper says.

Salt doesn’t always do the trick, Baker says. When the temperature dips below 25 degrees, it doesn’t work as fast. It doesn’t work at all when it falls below 15 degrees, in dry snow with high winds or when the snow mixes with rain.

Helpful hints

Capper has to be alert; sometimes vehicles pull over on the shoulder, forcing him to pull in the wing to avoid hitting them. He gets stuck in traffic backed up from accidents and has to slow down for nervous drivers.

The best way to help plow drivers, he says, is to stay home if you don’t absolutely need to be driving. But if you must be out, keep a long distance between you and the vehicle ahead of you. Avoid sitting on the shoulder. And if you’re very nervous about driving in snow, stay off the highway and take local roads instead.

Not everyone followed that advice Sunday.  At one point along Capper’s route, traffic backed up after a maroon SUV slid out of control and hit a guard rail; it didn’t appear anyone was hurt.

Farther east, near the Nescopeck/Conyngham exit, the entire westbound highway was shut down due to a multi-tractor trailer accident, PennDOT reported.

Capper didn’t let it phase him.

“It’s a battle against Mother Nature,” Capper says as a plume of snow from his wing plow shoots past his window. “She always wins, of course. But I do my best to keep the roads clear. At least, I-80.”

Susan Schwartz can be reached at 570-387-1234, ext. 1306, and susan.schwartz@pressenterprise.net.