After a full day of digging out from blizzard, Riverhead looks forward to getting back to business as usual

Riverhead schools are set to reopen tomorrow at their regular times. School district workers were busy clearing snow from walkways and parking lots on the school campus.

Snow clearing was the theme all around town today, as highway crews worked to clean up intersections and plow back snow drifts that during early morning hours threatened to make already-plowed roads impassable and Riverhead Buildings and Grounds crews continued to work to plow and clear town facilities and sites.

“Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have everything back in order,” Riverhead Highway Superintendent George Woodson said this afternoon. Crews will be out plowing, salting and sanding again tomorrow, cleaning up intersections and plowing back snow that’s either blown or pushed onto roadway surfaces.

While the highway department is responsible for clearing the town’s roadways, the town buildings and grounds department is charged with maintaining all town facilities, including all municipal buildings and parking lots and many sidewalks.

“They worked around the clock to make sure police and ambulance headquarters remained clear for the duration of the storm,” Town Supervisor Sean Walter said.

“The highway and buildings and grounds crews did a fantastic job,” Walter said.

The highway department’s crew of 30 men worked nearly 48 hours straight to keep Riverhead roads open during the blizzard.

“I give my guys all the credit. They really worked their tails off, as they always do, to get the job done,” Woodson said.

Walter said he also wanted to give “a shout-out” to Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, who sent six state plows, redirected from NYC and Nassau to harder-hit Suffolk County, to Riverhead to plow overnight. They were a big help, Walter said.

Woodson said he’s hoping the crews have a chance to rest up before another storm that has the potential to drop more than six inches on our area arrives Sunday night, according to the current National Weather Service forecast. A clipper system will bring snow tomorrow night, but little or no accumulation is expected from that.

He said Riverhead will be ready for the next storm.

Though the town is waiting on a delivery of 800 tons of salt, there’s enough on hand to see the town through “another storm or two if we manage it right,” Woodson said.

East End towns find it more difficult to get salt delivered than western Long Island towns, according to Woodson.

“Truckers find it a lot easier to deliver to western Suffolk, coming from Staten Island or New Jersey like they do,” Woodson said. “Oftentimes, we’re kept waiting a lot longer.”

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl