ROANOKE, Va. – Our winter storm may be gone but for some, it’s still causing problems.
Crews continue to clear roads and are now preparing for potential refreezing overnight Monday.
With most primary and secondary roads cleared, the focus shifted Monday.
“We do have quite a number of miles of unpaved secondary roads throughout our region,” said VDOT spokesperson Jason Bond.
Those roads are lower priority and require a different strategy.
“You run a motor grader over those routes, some heavy machinery to kind of break up the ice and snow, make a pass over those routes and you might put down some additional abrasives on top of that,” Bond said.
This comes after an aggressive plan of attack over the weekend.
After the first round of snow, crews worked diligently to plow and treat roads, preparing for any more potential precipitation.
In most places, that wasn’t a problem; however, in the New River Valley, freezing rain overnight led to slick roadways Monday morning.
“There were many roads that had just patches of ice, that frozen slush, glaze of ice on them this morning so as the temperatures have risen today, a lot of those hard surface roads are starting to melt,” Bond said.
But the threat isn’t over with the potential for refreezing overnight. VDOT will be monitoring trouble spots and putting down more salt and abrasives as needed, trying to keep the roads safe as we dig out from the region’s biggest snowstorm in years.
“We’re really hoping that today a lot of things will dry up and we will be able to move beyond this storm,” Bond said.
VDOT said this was the 14th system they’ve responded to in this region so far this season.