BRAZOS VALLEY, TX — The roads are still slick and snow-covered in the Brazos Valley. Though Monday night’s snow softened during the day, public works staff say that the roads are freezing back up.
City of Bryan streets and drainage supervisor, Robert Willis, issued a warning Tuesday night about motorists making trips today."The roads are going to get icier with the precipitation coming, as the temperatures fall when the sun goes down," Willis said. "The roads are going to ice over again.”
In both Bryan and College Station, public works staff have been working round the clock to put sand down, but only in the specific spots where it’s needed most urgently."We’ve been mainly focusing on making sure that fire and [police departments] can get in and out of their stations, and can access emergency rooms,” said Marshall Wallace, city of College Station streets division manager.
A representative of the Texas Department of Transportation [TxDOT], reported that their staff is constantly, and continually, tending to the highways across the Brazos Valley, laying down magnesium Chloride in order to melt snow and ice.
On Tuesday, Texas Senator, Lois Kolkhorst, shared that the State would dispatch nearly 700 snow plows to be used across Texas. According to TxDOT, none of those plows are being issued to the Brazos Valley.
Instead, our local region is receiving two additional motor grade trucks to assist in melting ice." The way things look right now, sometime mid-day/mid-afternoon on Friday, the temperatures are supposed to get above freezing," said Marshall Wallace. "This stuff on the road is not going to thaw out immediately, especially as cold as it’s been.”
The experts urge all to be patient and stay off the roads for the next few days, traveling only in an emergency.