Storm chaser Mike Scantlin is in Little Rock, Arkansas, where city residents are stocking up on food and supplies before the major winter storm brings snow and ice to the area.
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00:00This is kind of the calm before the storm, Mike.
00:05I don't know if it's calm. It might be a little more frantic than calm. But, you know, I made my
00:10rounds this morning to the grocery stores, the department stores, hardware stores, just to see
00:15what preparations were being made. And fortunately, you know, I'm seeing a lot of people taking this
00:19seriously, a lot of people buying those last minute items, a lot of firewood, the snow shovels.
00:25You can't find a snow shovel in this town. The manager of a hardware store told me they had a
00:29shipment of snow shovels showing up at 1 p.m. today. And I told him not to count on it because
00:33if it's coming in from the west, it is mayhem here on Interstate 40, westbound through the state
00:38into Oklahoma. It's a mess in Oklahoma right now. And that's headed our direction here with the
00:43leading edge of that sleet, maybe even some thundersleet, just about 20 miles west of the
00:47Little Rock Metro here. All right, Mike. So looking at the roads behind you, for the most part,
00:52everything looks fairly good. How has the Arkansas Department of Transportation
00:56been treating the roads for the impending storm?
01:02Well, you know, on the interstates, on the major interstates, this is Interstate 630 here. I'm just
01:06on the south side of downtown, north side of downtown. Sorry, I'm turned around. It's there.
01:12You've got those stripes of pretreatment that they lay down on the interstates and on the main roads
01:17here in the city off of the interstates. There hasn't been a lot of preps done. I haven't seen
01:21a lot of salt or sand in those. The intersections are on those trouble spots yet. So as far as
01:29businesses go, there are a lot of people pretreating, a lot of sand, a lot of salt in the
01:34parking lots and whatnot. But here on the city streets, I have not seen a lot of preparations
01:37made. But on the interstates, that pretreatment's down and they're just waiting for it to start.
01:42You know, Mike, one of the reasons that we're really watching Little Rock especially is because
01:46the amount of snow that's forecasted is more than Little Rock really gets in a season, let alone one
01:52single winter storm. So it's good to hear it sounds like people are taking this seriously
01:57and trying to prepare. Absolutely. And, you know, we could, you know, while we can have some fun
02:06with it, the kids are watching for the potential double snow day, four-day weekend here if they
02:11get some significant snow. So, you know, the kid inside of me is excited for them for that. And
02:15there are also no sleds to be found at any of the stores. So there are some kids out there hoping
02:20that this overperforms. You know, 6.4 inches is the most snow they've had in a 24-hour period
02:26in 40-plus years. So, you know, a big storm on the way. How much of that is sleet and how much
02:32of that is snow remains to be seen. But we're prepared and we're ready for it here. All right.
02:36So it sounds like the serious preparation and the fun preparation are both covered. Storm chaser
02:42Mike Scanlon, thanks for joining us. We'll check back in with you a little bit later.