County and MoDOT Say They're Ready This Time Around

With a winter storm threatening the region with freezing rain through rush-hour today, St. Louis County crews will be salting residential streets throughout the afternoon.

St. Louis County Department of Highways and Traffic sent out the following information.

“Right now, we’re looking at a 65 percent chance of freezing rain and sleet moving into St. Louis County sometime between late afternoon and this evening,” said Dave Wrone, public information manager for the county’s Department of Highways and Traffic.

“This is a 'better safe than sorry' scenario," he said. "We’d rather pre-treat with salt and not have the expected storm arrive than to not salt and find ourselves contending with very difficult ice conditions.”

After crews finish salting the subdivision and residential streets, they’ll shift to the county’s arterial road system – which consists of multi-lane roads such as Clayton, Forest Park Parkway, Shackelford, Big Bend Boulevard, Old State and Reavis Barracks. The salt will be sprayed with calcium chloride, which enhances its ice-melting characteristics in colder temperatures.

County forces will be in the field, salting and, if necessary, plowing, around-the-clock until the storm passes.

On the state-maintained roads, MoDOT is taking taking no chances on today's weather event. After in the first winter storm of the season, a spokesman said they're ready this time.

"We learned a few lessons from that," said Jim Alter, with MoDOT Customer Relations. "We're going to have a full crew in all afternoon and all night."

He said the roads are being pre-treated this afternoon.