Across North Texas preparations for possible winter weather continue. The Texas Department of Transportation’s Fort Worth district has been working for several days to pretreat roads across its nine-county coverage area.
“We’re applying brine to the roadways and all brine is, is a salt and water combination and when the precipitation falls it does lower the freezing point of that water. We are ultimately just trying to stop ice from bonding onto the roadway,” TxDOT spokesperson Val Lopez said. “Freezing rain is especially terrible it glazes on impact.”
Crews are currently working 12-hour shifts consisting of around 200 employees and once the weather event begins teams will transition road treatment plans.
“We typically transition the products we use from liquid to salt and salt-based deicer and the combination of salt and sand. Sand doesn’t melt anything, but it does provide a little traction,” Lopez said. “With brine we can basically treat everything. It’s pretty cost-effective – pennies for gallon -- so we can pretreat every roadway given enough time, but once that bad weather rolls in we focus on the bridges and overpasses.”
Even though it will get colder, the NBC 5 Weather Experts say temperatures will be staying above freezing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with only a cold rain expected, but areas well to the west could see sleet or snow on Thursday.
Up to an inch of sleet or snow to our west could bring travel issues. Use caution if traveling that way. Remember, bridges and overpasses ice first.
