photo by: Shawn Valverde

Heavy machinery is used to clear Massachusetts Street of snow on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025.

As Lawrence and Douglas County faces potentially several inches of snow and bitterly cold temperatures due to a winter storm this weekend, city officials and other organizations are working to ensure residents’ safety with both expanding shelter capacity and road treatment.

The city will be under both Winter Storm Watch and Cold Weather Advisory starting Friday evening as the region could see around seven inches of snowfall while wind chills are expected to be around negative 15 to 20 degrees, as the Journal-World reported.

With the extreme winter conditions, the city and organizations are focusing on ensuring there are cold-weather emergency shelters available. Last winter, the city partnered with churches to provide overflow shelter when the Lawrence Community Shelter was filled. In November 2025, the city announced “all inclement weather sheltering services” would go through the LCS as part of its winter emergency shelter plan.

Misty Bosch-Hastings, the director of the city’s Homeless Solutions Division, told the Journal-World at the time the shelter’s newly installed 24 Pallet cabins, which can provide 48 beds of low-barrier shelter, should be enough because the overflow demand last winter was lower than that.

However, Bosch-Hastings told the Journal-World Thursday through email the city’s Homeless Response Team “has been providing overflow capacity” as needed since early December. Bosch-Hastings said the additional capacity has been necessary since the team is seeing more individuals “from outside Douglas County who do not have safe sheltering options available in their home communities.”

The city has policies that it first adopted in August 2024 to focus on prioritizing providing its limited resources to homeless individuals from Douglas County while nonresident homeless individuals are given short-term assistance and support to return to their place of origin.

Bosch-Hastings said when temperatures reach life-threatening levels — like are forecast for this weekend — the priority for the HRT is “preventing loss of life.”

“In those situations, we provide temporary, emergency shelter to ensure people can survive extreme conditions,” Bosch-Hastings said.

When the overflow space has been needed this winter, Bosch-Hastings said a long-time partner, First United Methodist Church, has “stepped up” to help provide space for an overflow shelter. Bosch-Hastings said operating those types of shelters requires the HRT to “work rotating shifts” at the shelter as well as doing its core outreach and housing stabilization work. She said the city has created a volunteer sign up to help at the overflow shelters through the United Way, and she is encouraging community members to consider volunteering to help those efforts.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The Lawrence Community Shelter, 3655 E. 25th St., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025.

Along with the overnight shelters, the Homeless Resource Center, 944 Kentucky St., announced Thursday that it would have extended hours over the weekend to provide “a warm, safe place during the day.”

Executive Director Brett Hartford said on a post on social media that the center would hold emergency daytime hours on Friday from 2 to 6 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Monday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Hartford said expanding the hours for a daytime shelter works in partnership with Lawrence Community Shelter “so people have options both day and night during this extreme weather.”

TREATING THE ROADS

In terms of dealing with the impact of the snowfall, the city’s Municipal Services and Operations department have begun preparing to handle the several inches of snowfall coming to Lawrence.

Michael Leos, a spokesperson for the MSO department, told the Journal-World over email that city crews had begun “pretreating bridges and elevated surfaces” early Thursday morning. The city’s crews are preparing to shift to 24/7 operations to deal with the snow.

Leos said once snow begins to fall, city crews prioritize treatment and plowing on priority routes first to help emergency, fire, police and transit vehicles move safely across the city. Those routes include school zones, bridges, hospitals, emergency facilities, bus routes and commercial/industrial corridors. Once those priority routes are taken care of, Leos said the teams move to plow residential streets. That generally starts “once two or more inches of snow has accumulated, or when icing occurs,” according to Leos.

photo by: Shawn Valverde

A snow plow works to keep up with the snow before dawn Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in Lawrence.

Leos said the city “strongly encourage(s) residents” to stay home unless travel is essential. If you need to drive, drivers should slow down, increase following distance and use extra caution at intersections and on hills.

Leos also said that there are certain things residents could do that “make a big difference in how quickly and safely streets are cleared.” That includes moving cars off the street whenever possible — he noted that cul-de-sacs are “specially difficult to clear” if cars are parked on the street — keeping trash and recycling carts out of the street and clearing adjacent sidewalks “within 48 hours after snowfall ends.”

Trash and recycling collection will continue as conditions allow, but Leos said service could be delayed if the roads become too hazardous. The city will send out press releases and other notifications if services change. For the most up-to-date winter weather information — including priority route maps and live traffic cameras –residents can visit lawrenceks.gov/snow.