Bracing for a blast of winter, Georgia’s road warriors gear up for a preemptive strike against snow and ice, as the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) rolls out a fleet of brine trucks to tackle the impending frosty menace. According to FOX 5 Atlanta, GDOT's machinery was already on the march Sunday, with 35 brutes of brine trucks on the roads in District 6, anticipating flurries and ice sheets in the coming days.
The agency has taken a firm stance, appealing to motorists to clear the streets post-7 p.m., to give the brine brigade ample room for their frost-fighting foray, the fleets have been seen fanning out across metro Atlanta’s arteries Friday night, where, as Joe Schulman with GDOT explained in a statement obtained by FOX 5 Atlanta, workers will "be prepared" and working tirelessly "all night into tomorrow, all day tomorrow into Tuesday," to ensure roads remain navigable. The Northeast corner of Georgia, in particular, is expected to bear the brunt of the chill, GDOT officials endeavor to concentrate their efforts where the frosty pummeling is predicted to be most severe without interference of clogged traffic corridors which could hamper their operation and delay their safe return to the warmth of their homes and families.
Gearing up with over 1.2 million gallons of brine and more than 19,000 miles of Georgian roads to treat, GDOT means to outpace the storm, setting a high bar to avoid a repeat of the infamous 2014 “Snowmageddon.” "We can make up to 50,000 gallons of brine here an hour,” said Natalie Dale of GDOT in an interview with 11Alive, pointing to the stark contrast to a time when the state could muster only 70,000 gallons of the stuff.
As the mercury dips, road temps are under constant surveillance by GDOT’s weather sensors, to keep black ice at bay, According to GDOT's Natalie Dale, these mechanisms are crucial as they inform their tactical response to the dynamic conditions, alerting to variations "in the air, what the surface temperature is, what the sub-surface temperature is,” monitoring is the name of the game throughout the looming weekend, ensuring the roads, as much as they can be, are armed against the whims of winter.
