The hub of the Georgia Department of Transportation’s communications center: If you call 511 to report ice, someone here picks up the phone.
They’ve got thousands of cameras throughout the state and they can pull up any one they want on several screens to check the status of the road.
They looked mostly clear on Wednesday afternoon but spokeswoman Natalie Dale said that this is not an invitation to get out and drive
“Started yesterday at 9 a.m. brining all the major roadways,” Dale said. “Switched over last night to that rock and salt mixture and plowing. And have been continuing that throughout the day."
Wednesday night, they are going to re-brine areas that are for the most part clear right now but are at risk of refreezing. They are using every staff member, every machine and every material they need to handle this.
“We’re going to get that extreme chill so anything that’s overnight will stay there so that’s why it’s important our crews have the time and space they need to continue to get this stuff off the roadway,” Dale said. “Because it won’t just melt off and the wind won’t just make it disappear.”
There are 18 plow teams in the metro plus the crews they sent up from Savannah, Georgia. The brine trucks should hit the road after 6 p.m.
They plan to beef-up their brine to get ready for the extreme cold that is going to stick around. The process involves adding calcium chloride to the salt mixture which should protect roads down to -18 degrees. Hopefully, we won't be getting that low, but it will be much colder than metro Atlanta is used to, so they're taking the extra steps to be safe.
GDOT is responsible for 18,000 center-lane miles of road. Of that, 13,000 were affected by the storm. That includes roads south of Columbus, Georgia all the way north to Tennessee. About three-fourths of the state was impacted by this storm and there's still a lot of work to do.
That's all compared to only a quarter of the state which was affected by the last big storm - even though some areas got more snow that time around.
