Leaders at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro are bracing for winter weather. As of Wednesday afternoon, WXII 12 News meteorologists expect about one to two inches of snowfall in Randolph County on Thursday, followed by freezing temperatures Friday morning.Zoo leaders spent Wednesday loading up four-wheelers with sand and environmentally friendly ice melt in preparation for the storm.“We do not use salt inside of the park because of the damage it would do to the turf and the plant life,” said Jody Stancil, the curator of horticulture at the zoo. “Normally, it’s for traction and for our vehicles to be able to make it in the park with five miles of walkways and tram roads.”Stancil says as of Wednesday evening, the park is set to be open during normal hours Thursday. However, he says park leaders will reassess whether the park will be open before 9 a.m. Thursday.“We normally have to monitor up until the very last minute. Our rangers are here 24 hours a day,” Stancil said. “Most of the time, those decisions have to be made late due our uncertainty of whether it would be rain or snow or ice.”Stancil says the park could be completely open, partially open or closed. He says there are places for essential staff to sleep on the park grounds if necessary. He also says four-wheel drive transportation is provided for all park to staff to make sure they can safely get to the zoo.“Our main goal is to ensure the safety of all of the animals and the staff. Keepers still have to get inside the park to feed the animals, no matter what kind of weather we may have,” Stancil said.In addition, Stancil says zoo leaders do whatever they can to keep the park open in some capacity during winter weather events, as long as it’s safe.“We are a state park and we’re open 363 days a year, so we like to not close the park. It is a very beautiful park, especially after a snow event, and we do get a lot of picture-takers out this way, who love to come out and see the polar bears in the snow, which is one of my favorites. And they don’t get that very often, not with natural snow, so to be able to allow the guests to come inside the park and experience what this park can look like in a beautiful scene such as that, that’s important to everyone here,” Stancil said.Nancy Kauffman, the elephant manager at the zoo, is one of the essential staff members who will be at the zoo regardless of whether it’s open.“When we are preparing for those events, we want to make sure that we have all things animal taken care of,” Kauffman said. “Because even if the zoo is closed that day, the caretakers still have to come in. The animal trainers still have to come in. The keepers have to come in. So just because the zoo might be closed doesn’t mean that the animals don’t get that interaction with the keepers, so we’re still wanting to make sure that we have all of the food that we need with elephants. They eat over 200 pounds of food a day each and we have six elephants, so that’s a lot of food to go through.“We still have to come in because the elephants need us, the gorillas need us, they still need to get their daily amount of food. They need to be looked after. Some of them might need to have a veterinarian come in and look at them. We still have to come in and look after them even if there’s a snow day.”Kauffman said all of the elephants at the North Carolina Zoo are African elephants. She says some of them enjoy the snow and other do not.“Some elephants are really mellow and maybe just kind of want to stay in and maybe have that Netflix-kind-of-vibe during a snow day, where some elephants will actually go out and when there’s ice on a pond or a water source that they have, they’ll actually break through that and go swimming. So there are all different types of personalities,” Kauffman said.She says if the weather is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the elephants have the option of going inside of the heated barn. She says if the weather is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, they assess the elephants’ behavior to determine if they should still have the option to spend time outside.“If it’s going to be below freezing, we have to take that into account and make sure that all of the heating instruments in the barn are working properly. We have to make sure that we have enough food so that if for some reason the commissary stops, the folks that actually deliver diets around the zoo, if they aren’t able to come in, we make sure that we have enough food to make it through the next day. We have a giant hay trailer that’s full of several bales of hay so we would need to make sure that’s fully stocked, so if we need to prepare for weather for a couple days, we are prepared for that,” Kauffman said.