TxDOT urges drivers to stay off icy roads as crews pre-treat highways ahead of winter storm
When roads get iced over, it's not a place you want to be, so the Texas Department of Transportation is warning drivers to stay off the roads if they can ahead of this weekend's storm.
But TxDOT crews are already out there prepping the roads for those of us who can't stay home this weekend.
If you've been driving on the highways today, you may have seen TxDOT trucks prepping the roads with that special brine mixture of salt and water. It's designed to keep the roads from icing over this weekend.
"That dried salt product is what deludes the precipitation, and it acts like anti-freeze. It raises, or rather it lowers, that given water," said Val Lopez, a TxDOT spokesperson.
That's the whole idea behind the brine: get salt on the roads so when snow or ice hits it, it's harder for it to freeze over and turn our roads into an ice rink.
Preventing ice is the name of the game this weekend.
"Ice is much harder to deal with than snow. It's slipperier than snow, it's heavier and denser, it actually bonds to the roadway," said Lopez.
So, TxDOT in Fort Worth deployed its trucks starting at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, ahead of this weekend's winter weather.
Once that weather arrives, TxDOT will deploy every tool in its toolbox to keep roads as safe as possible.
"We do transition to other materials as the ice accumulates, salt, sand, chemical de-icers. The sand is typically used to provide a little bit of traction," said Lopez, "In the Fort Worth district, we have 250 vehicles of all sorts of configurations we use during the events those can be the large 10 yard sanders that are the back bone of our sanding crew all the way down to the pickup sanders that we hit hot spots with,"
But TxDOT says the number one thing drivers can do to stay safe this weekend is to stay off the roads. If you have to drive somewhere, give yourself enough time to get there, drive slowly if you must drive on icy roads, and give yourself plenty of space to slow down if something happens to the driver in front of you.