Batesville, MS—
FAST FACTS:
- Mississippi Dept. Transportation began salting roads Tuesday
- Two Thousand lane-miles salted
- Brine mixture withstands rain, sleet
dennis.turner@wreg.com
(Batesville, MS 1/27/2010) Local transportation departments say they're ready for winter weather that isn't expected for days.
They began preparing early, and say those early preparations will last.
Mississippi's Department of Transportation began laying out those familiar white stripes on major roads back on Tuesday morning, and expect to finish by Wednesday afternoon.
They started mixing their winter brew early at the district two office of Mississippi's Department of Transportation.
The salt brine mixture gets formulated by hand and stirred until ready.
Then it's tested for the proper salt content before it's loaded up on trucks and sent out over thousands of miles of North Mississippi highways.
It's guaranteed to stick even if it rains before it ices or snows. "If you get it out on the roadway and it dries then you have the salt that remains on the road. Now, when the event happens and it begins to rain or sleet, then actually it kinda re-activates the solution on the road," said District Two Engineer Richard Allen with the Mississippi Department of Transportation.
Allen says actually, a little rain makes it work better, as long as it's not a total downpour which rarely happens with a snow or ice storm.
The brine is also easier for trucks to spread on the roadways. In fact, Mississippi is putting down brine on two thousand lane-miles of it's highways, at a mixture of about two pounds of salt per gallon. That's salty!
And Allen says there are other benefits, "We feel like what we got now is working real well and it doesn't cost very much money."
It's a big job. District Two contains enough highway to get you all the way to Washington state. Fortunately, this predicted winter event is only expected to affect about a third of that this time.
