MS MDOT surveys the roads after overnight winter storm
NORTH MISSISSIPPI (WCBI) – The Mississippi Department of Transportation is seeing the effects of the winter storm.
David Kenney with MDOT said crews have been out overnight during the peak of the winter storm.
Most of the impact has been in the Northern counties with snow and frozen precipitation causing icing on roads, bridges, interstates and highways throughout Lee County and north of Tupelo.
Multiple wrecks have been reported.
Kenney said ice presents a totally different challenge, and he said it could be a couple of days before there is enough warmth to melt the ice off the roads.
“That layer of ice on the ground is not enough to plow right now. So plowing operations really haven’t started. We’ve needed to get softened up. Usually, Mother Nature helps us with that, but she’s not going to be able to in the next two days as temperatures remain below freezing, and subfreezing overnight. It doesn’t take a lot. Just a thin layer of ice to really cause problems. And our last storm we had six inches of snow. We were able to plow it, get it off the road. Traffic was perfect, but this is a different beast. The storm put this thin layer of ice down and this is causing problems,” said Kenney.
Kenney said for those that have to travel in these conditions to use caution and advises emergency travel only.
