Snow Has Stopped Falling In Fort Worth, But Icy Roads And Trees Still A Concern
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Ice and snow blankets the Metroplex. While some got out and had fun, most people stayed at home.
Mike Drivdahl with the Fort Worth Fire Department said only 14 accidents took place from 8 p.m. Wednesday night to 5 a.m. this morning - a normal number for a regular day.
He said, "Things have been incredibly quiet; we appreciate that fact that all of our residents have done exactly what we asked them to do which is to stay home, stay off the roads the traffic is moving very minor, we have not responded to very many incidents which is exactly what we needed to do."
But while things seem smooth now, Drivdahl fears tomorrow will be a different story.
"Overnight all that water is going to freeze so people are going to end up thinking go back out and drive on the roads tomorrow because we haven't had snow or rain in the past 24 hours which is really completely the opposite because it will be slick tomorrow morning because all that stuff is going to refreeze," he said.
Jen Myers, a meteorologist spokesperson for Oncor, also warned that the lack of precipitation could give North Texans a false sense of security.
"That can be so deceiving because even though [wintry precipitation] stopped falling from the sky... that doesn't mean we couldn't still see additional outages," she said.
But that isn't the only thing to be concerned about. Myers said the power company is worried about ice forming on tree branches, which could cause them to fall onto power lines.
"Just a little bit of that ice will melt off the trees and sometimes that can cause the trees to - instead of sagging, can come up again and that repeated melting and sagging and melting back and forth, back and forth can weaken the tree even more and cause more outages," she said.
Luckily, there haven't been too many outages yet. Oncor has over 1,700 people from out of state helping out and ready to respond to outages.
Meanwhile, the streets and sidewalks are still covered in ice and are very slippery. If you have to go outside, be extremely careful.
