SAN ANGELO, Texas — The Texas Department Of Transportation San Angelo is gearing up to make sure roads are safe for the winter weather expected later this week.
TXDOT San Angelo Public Information Officer Karen Threlkeld said maintenance trucks have already started to load up with sand to help reduce slippery roads.
Sand is placed on the surface of icy roads to create a grip which prevents wheels from slipping. Threlkeld says the primary highway TXDOT San Angelo will be working on is the loop because it has the most traffic.
“We’re preparing today, our road crews will be out tomorrow resurfacing the entire loop with a brine solution. The other highways around the area, all the major U.S. roads 277, 87, 67, will be treated mainly the structures so the bridges, overpasses, curves, areas that are prone to being a little bit more slick,” Threlkeld said.
Threlkeld explains, the brine solution goes onto the road as a pretreating surface to prevent the ice from actually forming on the road.
“During a storm, we have to depend on the weather forecast to predict whether it’s actually going to be snowing, sleeting or ice. We have to change our mixture to that whether the blend of the ice, whether we do the sand and the salt might blend a little bit differently depending on what’s happening,” Threlkeld said.
Threlkeld says the brine trucks are getting filled with over 2,000 gallons of brine. V-box spreaders help distribute the salt and the sand mixture applied on the road surface during a storm.