Scott L. Chris S. Tyler G.

While DOT's battle to regain SR 240 post "tumblegeddon" has past, it would seem our fight has only begun.

Beginning Jan 2, the facilities team has focused its efforts on mitigating the considerable impedance that the tumbleweeds have imposed on traveling along the X and Y arms. But, to no avail. Our efforts on Jan 2 & 3 along the x arm were quickly undone when another wind storm came through on Sat, Jan 4. 

With delivers and site walkthroughs being performed on and around our regularly scheduled Tuesday maintenance window we shifted our priority for tumbleweed processing from the X arm to the Y. By 1pm local time we had the Y arm mostly cleared and absolutely passable. By 3pm, the Y arm was once again obstructed.

At this time, facilities is discouraging any attempt to travel along the Y arm between now and tomorrow morning. The X arm is absolutely NOT passable and will likely remain in this state for most of the week and maybe longer.

Based on the forecast in front of me, we are likely to see some intermittent winds through Wednesday. We will continue making our best effort to keep high priority areas outside of the corner station accessible but progress may be slow.  

To reiterate my point from this morning's all hands meeting: Please don't run over tumbleweed piles in the cars. As the arms are (slowly) opened up for travel no low clearance vehicles should be driven down the arms as running large piles over can and will rearrange and damage the undercarriages of the cars and in some extreme cases will high center the vehicle.


Attached photos are of the X arm looking at the mid station. These are the worst areas we've encountered to this point. For reference, the harvester is approximately 13' tall.

More photos/videos available upon request.