Highway crews in North Texas prepare roads ahead of potential wintry weather
NORTH TEXAS — Highway crews in North Texas are already out spraying brine ahead of potential winter weather next week. The salt and water mixture acts as an anti-freeze to prevent ice from binding on the roadways.
The North Texas Tollway Authority started brining elevated surfaces on its highways Friday. NTTA will also have a patrol presence throughout the system on Sunday night into Monday morning.
The TxDOT Fort Worth District plans to start pre-treating roads on Sunday, with a focus on bridges and overpasses as well since those tend to freeze first.
"Fortunately the brine that we apply can last almost a week depending on the weather and traffic," said Val Lopez with the TxDOT Fort Worth District. "So getting out ahead of it is best practice that we utilize."
When the weather rolls in, TxDOT will have more than 350 personnel working around the clock with a stockpile of more than half a million gallons of brine.
"This is pretty much the first event of this year," Lopez said. "We're well prepared for it. We're well stocked and we'll be on standby as it comes through."
The TxDOT Dallas District has no plans to brine at this time. Neither does the City of Fort Worth.
Fort Worth crews are loading up trucks now with salt-sand mix so they'll be ready to respond if any wintry precipitation starts sticking to the roads next week.
"We're going to be responding as needed since there is no rain in the forecast as of right now," said Teanna Thompson with the City of Fort Worth Streets Department. "But when rain does come, we will be responding to our priority sites, which is hospitals, hills, bridges, emergency entrance locations and also our emergency overflow shelters."
The city will start staging crews and sand trucks at every quadrant of Fort Worth starting this weekend, so they'll be in position to react to weather quickly. They have more than 4,000 tons of salt-sand mixture on hand.
"We actually just completed a two-day training event with our employees to make sure they are knowledgeable and ready to respond," Thompson said.
Agencies say it's impossible for them to be everywhere at all times, so they need drivers to do their part when these winter storms happen. If you have to drive, give yourself extra time to get where you're going and give trucks plenty of room to do their work.
