Logan County officials were busy this morning gearing up for another big snowstorm.

The forecast for this evening is calling for snow accumulation of up to three inches of snow by this evening.

Mike Kolota with the Department of Highways in Logan County said this morning that his crews are on alert and ready to start salting and scraping roads when the snow hits.

“We’re ready for it,” Kolota said. “We’ve got our plows on and everything is fueled up and ready to go. We’ve got about 250 tons of salt and we’ll probably get 200 or 300 ton today and that will stretch us through the weekend.

“I’m going to look at the weather again Monday and we’ll try to keep the building full.”

The December 18 snowstorm dumped more than a foot of snow on Logan County and across the coalfields. Thousands of residents in Logan, Mingo and other coalfield counties were left without power for up to two weeks. Hundreds of utility poles fell and trees were downed under the weight of the heavy snow.

Kolota said the extremely cold temperatures should make the snowfall lighter. He said the Dec. 18 snow was so heavy because it was warmer.

“You take a temperature of 34-36 degrees and that produces a heavier snow,” Kolota said. “I don’t think this will be a heavy snow, because it’ll be too cold.”

Kolota said he’d heard a report that the coalfields might get up to eight inches of snow.

“I’m hoping it goes around us,” Kolota said. “But, it doesn’t look like it’s going to.”

Logan County Administrator Roscoe “Rocky” Adkins said the county officials are all on alert should a big snow fall on the area.

“We’ve got the same measures in effect that we had before, but I think they’re a little more teed up,” Adkins said. “Roger Bryant is the premier leader in this. For us, we start taking a look at what we need to do to maintain the courthouse and we work closely with Roger and Sonya Porter with the Logan County Sheriff’s Department. We make sure our cots and all the things we need for an emergency are in place. I think we’re better prepared this time than we were on Dec. 18.”

Bryant said the Logan County Office of Emergency Services is ready for the predicted snowstorm.

“We make sure everyone is aware that this is a possibility — and that’s all it is right now, a possibility,” Bryant said. “We’re on weather briefings to get a handle on it. Basically, we have already gotten our stuff restocked from the last storm and we try to get geared off and dust off our plan to make sure everyone is aware of what we need to do.”

Bryant said the Dec. 18 snowstorm wasn’t unexpected, but some aspects of the Winter Storm Plan did not work. “In our county plan, the shelters are to be manned by the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, but they were busy with other places in the state, so that didn’t happen and we had to improvise,” Bryant said. “So, what we did was what we always do in Logan County and that is individual citizen groups and communities stepped up and filled that void for us. That was the only part of our plan that didn’t work for us. The rest worked okay.”

Shelters were set up across Logan County for many residents who were without power following the Dec. 18 storm. School was back in session after being off Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week due to heavy snowfalls each day.