Road Crews Prepare For 24-Hour Winter Weather Work

Oklahoma City and county road crews said they will be out all-night working to keep ice off roadways.

“Everything is suited up and ready to go,” Oklahoma County Commissioner Brian Maughan said.

County crews are pre-treating bridges and overpasses, but Maughan said the rain washes much of the pre-treatment off, setting up for slick conditions on bridges.

“Without having any snow to work with, it’s very treacherous because you can only blade if you’ve got some accumulation otherwise you’re just straight tearing up the road,” Maughan said. “We really work on the pre-treatment stuff and see if we can get a slushy and firm up a little bit that we can scrape off.”

Another issue on Monday, most trees still have their leaves, giving freezing rain more to stick too, putting more weight on the trees, bringing limbs down on powerlines across the metro. County crews respond to remove downed trees on county roads.

“Especially with a little bit of wind, as were seeing, if they get iced up very much and they will snap,” Maughan said.

The City of Oklahoma City has 15 trucks salting bridges Monday afternoon. Starting at midnight, 19 trucks will begin salting snow routes.

Click here for a map of metro snow routes.