Road crews prepare for wintry mix

SCOTT COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - Road crews are preparing for Monday’s winter weather, and some schools are already calling off.

Crews are ready to go at a moment’s notice.

One phone call from the Roads and Maintenance Director JR Brandenburg, and drivers will hit the roads Monday night.

They have 300 roads to potentially clear and salt.

“We’re able to react real quickly and get the trucks loaded and immediately start to spread salt or get to plowing,” said Brandenburg. “However, we have to react to it.”

The snow, sleet and freezing rain predicted for late Monday evening into early Tuesday could lead to hazardous travel conditions. And according to the forecast, we could expect to get hit with wintry weather throughout the week.

“Just kind of watch and see what happens,” said Brandenburg. “The quicker you can react and get on top of something, the better off you are for keeping the roads safe.”

Last week, the little snow we had Friday morning was just enough to create some icy spots, especially on the interstate. Early Friday morning, Lexington Police were detouring drivers off of I-75 north at mile marker 108 because the roads were too bad any further past that.

Traffic jams were causing the problem. Lexington police say they worked 12 injury crashes and 78 non-injury crashes between midnight and 9:00 a.m.

Leaving Brandenburg with a message for drivers ahead of this blast.

“One good thing about tonight is there won’t be near as much traffic out on the roads,” said Brandenburg. “Just be patient with us. We’ll get the roads cleaned up. We’ll get salt on them and everything. If it gets slick and you’ve got to be out, just drive with caution. Give yourself plenty of stopping distance.”

Lexington Streets & Roads, in a statement, said they started pretreating bridges, hills and ranked roads at 8:00 Monday night, and are asking anyone who has to be on the roads tonight to drive very slowly and increase their following distance.

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