Madison County roads are clearer Thursday night than they were earlier in the day. Leaders believe the rain Thursday afternoon played a big role in this, but they are still worried about more ice coming in over the weekend.
“The snow plows really didn’t do us a lot of good yesterday,” Madison County Commission Chair Mac McCutcheon said. “A lot of the commissioners were out trying to use snow plows, but they were just scraping across the top of the ice and sliding down the road.”
County leaders said they were prepared for severe winter weather when they started treating road last weekend. The ice storm, though, proved to be too much to handle. They said their plans changed.
“We’re looking at a map of the county roads and the major connectors of county roads connecting to the state roads, and we’re focusing on those first,” McCutcheon said.
Madison County Commissioner Phil Vandiver said one lesson they learned is one of the formulas of the brine solution, for treating the roads.
“They’re mixing up 80 to 20 percent beet juice and brine,” he said. “That’s going to be something I’m checking in on if we can use or it or not. Every day is a learning experience, and we’ve learned from this situation.”
Slowly but surely, they are seeing progress in the roads.
“We starting to see our snow plows get in the ground to the ice a little bit to start whittling away at these hard spots trying to get them down a little bit where we can get more cars on the road to create more heat,” Vandiver said. “We want this ice melted where people can go where they need to go.”
County commissioners said smaller, less traveled roads would likely not be clear of ice until late in the weekend.
