Snow and Ice Control

When our snowplows are dispatched to county roads during a winter weather event, information about county road conditions can be found on our Facebook and Twitter pages, which will be updated through the duration of the storm.

Great question. Weld County is only responsible for maintaining county roads, meaning roads that are owned and within unincorporated Weld County. Municipalities within Weld County are responsible for maintaining roads within their boundaries, and the state is responsible for maintaining state highways within the county.

Every storm is unique, and our response to each storm is suited to achieve the maximum benefit with the resources available to us.  We dispatch our snow plows to the most severely impacted areas first, making it a priority to serve all areas of the county as soon as possible.

The county does use a sand/salt mixture to help with snow and ice control during winter weather events. This mixture is used primarily on intersections, hills, curves, multiple span bridges, and shaded areas.

It is not possible for the plow trucks to clear driveways on their route as they would not be able to clear snow from the roadways within the time allowed during their shift. Unfortunately, snowplows will leave a windrow in front of a drive as it is too time consuming for our plows to stop, or angle the blade, to keep this from happening.

The plow trucks have a hydraulic spreader on the rear of the vehicle that spreads solid material several feet behind and to the sides of the truck. Signs on the trucks warn motorists to stay back 250 feet to avoid being hit with this material being applied by the snow plow truck.

Weld County does not have a bare-pavement policy. Please expect plowed roads to potentially still have snow on them. That said, please drive appropriately for road conditions during snow and ice events, which means reduced speeds.

When it comes to gravel roads within Weld County’s jurisdiction, plow trucks are not used as the blade may damage the road surface. Motor graders are used to help clear off gravel roads once the accumulation of snow on these roads reaches 1-2 inches. Again, like our paved roads, please expect some snow to remain on the road surface after the motor grader passes.

Weld County has 22 snow routes, which total 669.4 miles. You can view the snow routes on our updated map, by clicking this link(PDF, 2MB). It’s good to know what snow route zone you live in, as you may see it referenced in a road condition update during winter weather season.

Weld County is very large – just over 4,000 square miles – and it isn’t unusual for one part of the county to experience different weather than other parts of the county. It could be snowing and blowing in the northeast part of Weld County and sunny and nice in the southwest part of the county. In order to try to communicate road condition information easily for residents, we may sometimes refer to the county in different zones: northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast. The dividing roads for these zones are Highway 34 (which runs east/west from I-25 through Greeley, Evans, Kersey) and Weld County Road 49 (which runs north/south just east of Highway 85).

Plow trucks are not available for requests. However, we do respond if emergency services (law, fire, paramedics, or dispatch) contacts us to help respond to specific addresses.