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Late warm weather a relief for Missouri roads

JEFFERSON CITY - Missouri's unseasonable warm weather will not mean any changes in the state's highway maintenance program.

"We won't be changing our activities or changing our plans for the construction works," said Sandy Hentges,the MODOT Outreach Coordinator.

The arrival of the snowy days yet would mean for the MODOT to keep on their routine tasks such as making sure the roads are clear of snow and dirt, and safe to drive along.

"When it snows, we do the snow removal," Hentges said,"and the rest of the winter, we do work on a lot of maintenance activity."

Since a disastrous flood overtook Missouri in 1993, the MODOT officials say they did not encounter the strikes of weather that might've posed a major challenge to the roads maintenance program.

"As far as any major disasters, I don't think that've been any that I can recall in the last ten years" Hentges said, "no roads were wiped out by flood or tornado."

This year's late warm weather doesn't either affect the state agricultural sector, given that the statewide harvesting season is now over in Missouri.

"The warm weather is not going to have any effect on the crops or ground," Mike Brown of the Missouri Department of Agriculture said.

On the other side, the current rain is not a harm either, for "any rain the state will get now is good to go into next spring".

"It doesn't have any impact on next spring's crops that will be planted," Brown said.

Yet with this year's hunting season announced open last week in Missouri, the warm weather may sound like a good news for the hunters. As less rain or cold weather out in the field, the deer hunters prefer stay out longer.

"With the beginning of the season, the weather was cool, but not too cold," Bill Heatherly of the Missouri Department of Conservation said, "and that encourages hunters to stay in the field longer, than they would necessarilly do if weather was very cold or rainy."

Heatherly said, some people believe that weather affects the deer movement during the height of the deer reproductive season. But, the notion that "they are going to move regardless of biological necessity" leads to the fact that "the weather generally affects the hunter behavior more than it affects the deer behavior".