State Highway Crews Prepare For Winter Weather

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Snow and icy cold temperatures are coming to Maryland. A Winter Storm Warning will go into effect for most of the state Tuesday. Crews are already getting a head start, pre-treating roads and salting.

Meghan McCorkell has more on the preparations for the latest storm.

Clear roads for Monday evening's commute but that won't last long. Slippery snow is expected to blanket everything within hours. Officials warn drivers to plan ahead.

"Now is the time to think about commute plans--either delaying your travel, teleworking, anything that you would need to do to ensure that you're traveling safely on Tuesday," said Kellie Boulware, State Highway Administration.

Road crews throughout the region are mobilizing to prepare for a serious hit from Mother Nature. Many of the roads have already been pre-treated. The city plans to bring in crews in shifts as the storm hits. More than 150 pieces of equipment will be deployed in Baltimore City. Crews will continue pre-treating operations at midnight. A full deployment will be on hand at 7 a.m.

"We're going to work 24 hours and when the storm center activates, we'll be there until we're finished," said Adrienne Barnes, City Department of Transportation.

BGE has also called in extra crews ahead of the storm to be on standby throughout the area.

"With snow comes very treacherous road conditions and at times, that can delay crew travel times. So we try to stage them throughout the service area so that they're closer to the action should we see any outages," said BGE spokesperson Rachael Lighty.

Along with the snow will come bone-chilling cold. The city has declared a Code Blue alert for the next two days.

State highway officials say they've already used 160,000 tons of rock salt this winter.

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