Before the first flakes had fallen, Westport Highway Surveyor said he is optimistic as possible about the battle to come.

Except for one plow that gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, “Everything is working and all patched together.” Blades, some of them many decades old, have been welded and sharpened and “are as ready as they can be.”

The town’s new brine truck is headed out to pretreat the roads with its blend of Westport harbor salt water and calcium chloride.

The town fleet at the moment includes six big plow trucks, four smaller trucks and a backhoe or two.

“We have enough drivers to keep them all rolling and I’m calling in two seasonal employees.”

“The question always is what happens to the plows when you actually get out there and start pushing stuff around.”

Calls have already gone out to 11 contractors who own plows. And the town also has a list of heavy equipment operators to call in if need be.

As always, the places he loses he most sleep over “are the small side streets off Route 6.

“Where do you put the snow?”

The streets are narrow and sometimes dead-end, yards are often fenced “and you can’t just push the snow out onto Route 6 … I know people get upset when you push snow back in their driveways but the plow only goes one way. Believe me, we don’t do it on purpose.”