Clarksville, TN – After the past weekend’s layered “lasagna” of snow, sleet, and ice accumulation, extreme cold conditions have complicated and at times delayed efforts to clear highways and roads in Clarksville and across the state.
Despite all of the challenges, the salt trucks and snow plows have been taking it to the streets, around the clock.
“Our Clarksville Street Department, closely supported by the City Garage, is working very hard in extremely cold and often dangerous conditions this week, and I greatly appreciate their uninterrupted commitment to making travel safer for everyone in our City,” said Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts.
“They are tired, and have faced bitter-cold temperatures that require of us all, a lot of added patience in the process of snow and ice removal on the streets and highways.
“But they are aggressively staying the course because they are the very best at what they do,” Mayor Pitts said.
Having anticipated the brewing winter storm based on several days of National Weather Service reports, the Clarksville Street Department began pre-treating City streets with brine on Thursday and Friday, January 23rd-24th, 2026.
Beginning at 4:00am on Saturday, January 25th, City street crews transitioned to spreading rock salt on City streets as weather forecasters continued to gain confidence in the probability of the major winter storm.
“Through that pre-treatment process, we covered all of our primary routes in the City, and also included high-hazard areas in secondary routes,” said David Smith, Director of the Clarksville Street Department.
“We had 65 people working around the clock until Sunday night. We sent part of the crew home to rest in lieu of sleeping on a cot another night. We’ve kept crews on, overnight, every evening, but have been cycling rest periods,” Smith said.
The City Garage led by Fleet Manager Billy Lee has also been staffed throughout the event to keep trucks, equipment, and the City’s fuel system up and running, which decreases downtime in the deployment of street crews.
With this winter storm and its aftermath, the Clarksville Street Department is forecasting the use of more than 9,000 tons of salt.
The value of that much salt, spent in the Clarksville Street Department’s budget, is about $1 million.
“Long-range weather isn’t predictable, so we buy some salt every year. But we have more than we typically use on hand, in the event of a severe weather event. Depending on what was used the prior year, we might buy between 2,000 to 3,000 tons, annually,” Smith said.
The storm doesn’t stop there. This week’s winter weather event has resulted in the use of 32 Street Department trucks and a dozen pieces of equipment, ranging from skidsteers to backhoes and loaders.
To operate all of the equipment, between 65 to 80 Clarksville Street Department employees are distributed around the City, depending on the hour of the day or night. That’s 5,036 total man hours so far. “We’ve also used over 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel in this winter event,” Smith said.
The truth is, this isn’t your average Tennessee winter storm. Its effects are lingering, and roads are still dangerous days after the final snowflakes and ice pellets fell.
“We typically see freezing precipitation that transitions to snow, but this was reversed,” Smith said. “This, plus cold temperatures, including one night when the wind chill was 20 degrees below zero, has led to the diminished effectiveness of our rock salt and plowing efforts.
“We need the roads to thaw so that we can effectively plow, and remove the ice that has been packed in the extreme cold. If we had started to plow too early, we’d only be removing the salt from the top of the icy accumulation that we’re attempting to melt,” Smith said.
The Street Department maps its pre-planned, routine strategy for snow removal routes, for the public to view and reference. Here is a link to the map: https://arcg.is/ne8eC
