GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. — Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem have already started preparing for this weekend's wintry weather chances. Officials are closely monitoring forecasts and getting their equipment ready.
Store owners, road crews, and city officials are all doing what they can, to keep roads safe. They said they are acting now to get ahead of the storm.
"My daughter gets tired of hearing this, but one of my mottos is, it's always better to have it than not need it than to need it and not have it," Tim Bell said.
That motto brought Bell to Lowe's Home Improvement so he could get ahead of the crowds and weather.
"It makes me concerned that combined with the wind that they're calling for I'm worried we're gonna have a lot of power outages again, so buying some deicer for the driveway and hope for the best," Bell said.
Bell said after that errand, he was heading to the grocery store next.
"I’m not doing the bread and milk thing, we’ve already taken care of that, so things that don’t require refrigeration in case we lose power, and that way we can eat and not have to worry about that," Bell said.
Mark Armfield is the general manager of McKnight Hardware. He said they've already seen a surge of shoppers.
"We're actually seeing a small surge today. We've sold some sleds. If this is a nice snow, and we do have a lot of sleds, we're going to sell some sleds," McKnight said. "Generators, we're getting calls for already, we've sold a little bit of stuff, but I expect by Friday depending on the models in the forecast we could be really busy Friday and Saturday."
Road crews say they have concerns of their own.
"We do have our issues with COVID, you have people sick, we have people quarantined, and so we're continuing in assessing that as it changes by the hour at times," NCDOT Division 7 Maintenance Engineer Brad Wall said.
Wall said his team will rely on contractors, but feel they will have the necessary staff for the weekend.
Staffing and COVID is also a concern down the road in Winston-Salem.
"Staffing is a challenge along with what the weather is going to do, so we're keeping a close eye on both," Senior Community Educator with the City of Winston-Salem Randy Britton said.
Britton said that's why the city is getting a head start on their preps.
"Because of the staffing levels, we can't afford to get behind on our timeline," Britton said. "We're actually going to start brining on Thursday and will finish it on Friday."
NCDOT and city officials said people should also prep now. That way when the winter storm hits you can stay at home, and stay away from the roads.