Road Crews Prepare For Second Winter Storm

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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Schools and some businesses remain close Tuesday in North Texas because of icy roadways. With a snow storm headed to North Texas overnight crews are preparing for round two.

While ice continues to melt this morning, there are still slick spots on the roads. The Texas Department of Transportation wants to avoid snow accumulation on top of sleet. Their first step is to use graters to scrape off that ice, after they scrape comes the de-icer. Crews will then follow up with sanders to put out the salt mixture ahead of the snow in the forecast.

TxDOT has about 140 vehicles to pretreat, deice or remove sleet or snow. Crews are already working around the clock and that will continue. Road crews are on 12 hour shifts until the weather improves.

Val Lopez with TxDOT says, "It's very important that we work very hard today to remove as much of that frozen sleet from the roadway as possible that is creating slick spots. Now we're working hard to blade that up and take advantage of today's worker temperatures to do that."

Eight vehicles got stuck on the mix master this morning due to the ice. A Fort Worth police helped push a van free.

TxDOT says it's easier to drive in snow than sleet, but it can still create a bad situation. They are working to make driving conditions better.

This is the first year crews are using the brine solution to pretreat the roads. It's making a big difference so far.

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