The Massachusetts Department of Transportation expects to deploy about 3,000 pieces of equipment during Tuesday’s daylong nor’easter, according to Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver.
As of 7 a.m., MassDOT already has over 500 pieces of equipment deployed and is updating those numbers quickly.
“These late season storms are really tough,” Gulliver said. “When you’re looking out the window and you’re looking at rain, you’re thinking this is going to be easy. It’s not, this is going to deteriorate very quickly as the temperature drops and the snowfall starts.”
Gulliver said one of the biggest challenges with storms that start with rain is the roads cannot be pretreated.
“When it starts raining and you have warm roadways, pretreatment is ineffective, and that means that when the snow really hits it’s going to ice up very quickly. When you have rates that we are talking about, two inches per hour, our snow plows are going to have a really difficult time keeping up.”
MassDOT’s message to drivers on Tuesday is to get necessary errands done early and work from home if possible.
“This is going to be a really difficult travel day, later in the day especially, and we really need that room to operate,” Gulliver said.
“We are really looking for cooperation,” he added. “I know it’s a difficult storm for a lot of people, but expect that roadway conditions are going to get worse throughout the day.”
(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)