By Tom Mark

Works Crews Tackle Slick Roads

Dec 21, 2017 | 9:51 AM

The snow this week has now left us with icy roads.

Vernon Public Works Manager James Rice says knowing it was going to get colder, more liquid deicer was put down.

It was hoped that would get rid of most of the ice before the temperature dropped.

“It was moderately successful. We did an inspection this morning and the routes do look better than they did yesterday but there are still a lot of places that do have compact snow and black ice.”

The problem is it just got too cold to allow the deicer to be efficient enough.

Mechanical Issues

Opening of Lavington Outdoor Pool delayed, again

12h ago

Commonage Crash

Motorcyclist hospitalized in crash near Vernon

15h ago

Two Deaths in May

Fatal drug poisonings recorded locally in May, yearly totals still down

17h ago

” You have kind of an opportunity to apply that liquid deicer based on temperature range and other conditions. We took advantage of that yesterday. Unfortunately now with the colder temperatures we move into sanding and hard salting these icy spots from here on out.”

He’s urging drivers to be mindful of their speed.

Rice says crews are doing what they can to make the sand stick to provide enough traction.

“The other thing that we do is our sand trucks are equipped with the liquid deicer as well so it actually sprays the sand before the sand is distributed on the road and that helps it bite into the ice as well.”

A bit more snow is in the forecast for this afternoon and into this evening.

That’s going to cause slicker driving conditions and can put added pressure on road crews as they sand and salt the streets.

“You know what happens is if we end up with even a light snowfall that accumulates on these icy areas it certainly makes things a little bit more challenging but we’ll certainly do our best to stay on top of it.”

Rice says they’ll continue to monitor the roads into the weekend to up the response if necessary.

by Tom Mark