City of Tupelo issues update on Winter weather recovery efforts

[PRESS RELEASE]

TUPELO, Miss. – Crews continued to make progress with cleanup efforts on our roads and bridges through the night. The temperatures held most of the night at 33 degrees.  With the forecasted freezing rain within the next six hours and temperatures below freezing now flash freeze and black ice will be issues we will be dealing with today. The work performed last night plowing and sweeping bridges was critical to prevent as much refreeze on the roads and bridges as possible. At shift change at 6 a.m. temperatures have now fallen below freezing and are forecasted to stay below until Tuesday afternoon. The main issue we have at this time is falling trees and limbs in the roadways due to the ice accumulation. This makes very dangerous working conditions for our crews and for the public as they continue to fall. The tree cleanup work was steady most of the night and will continue today. We are working closely with Tupelo Water and Light and Tombigbee Electric Power Association as some of the trees have taken down powerlines and will possibly continue to do so. Once they have safely removed the powerlines from downed trees in city rights of way and city streets, we will in most cases be in a cut and toss work plan to get the streets back open for emergency services. Full removal and cleanup of those trees will come later when conditions are safer for our crews. With the current conditions and trees having ice accumulations along the roadways we do recommend emergency travel only.