DelDOT Crews Prepping DE Roads for Wintery Weather on Saturday

DelDOT will have brining operations underway statewide today in preparation for Saturday’s wintry precipitation. Please give the plow crews plenty of space as they work.

Brine is a liquid salt mixture of 23% rock salt (sodium chloride) and 77% water that can be sprayed onto the road prior to a winter storm to form a bond breaker, helping to keep snow or ice from sticking to the ground. Brine has the same melting characteristics of solid rock salt, but since it is applied in liquid form, it is more effective at sticking the salt to the roadway.

Using brine is cost effective. It takes four times less salt to prevent ice from accumulating on the roads than to remove it after it has formed. Other uses for brine include spraying it on icy roads to help melt the ice quickly and spraying it on rock salt as it is spread to help stick the rock salt to the pavement and to speed up the ice and snow melting process.

This causes the initial coating of snow and ice to melt and slows down or may even stop the accumulation of ice and snow on the road surface. Brine also serves as a bond breaker which helps for clearing the road.

There are several factors that determine whether DelDOT pre-treats roadways ahead of a storm:

• DelDOT will not brine roads if the precipitation is predicted to begin as rain as this will wash the liquid salt solution off the roads and be ineffective. 
• If DelDOT has brined or salted roadways in the previous days and conditions have been dry, further pre-treatment may also be deemed unnecessary due to the residual salt on the roadways. 
• If pavement temperatures are forecasted to be above freezing, DelDOT may not brine in advance of a storm. 
• Depending on the severity of the storm that is forecasted, the air temperatures and pavement temperatures DelDOT may begin pre-treating roads as early as three days before an expected event.

You can see where the plows/brining trucks are throughout the state at the DelDOT website (go to the interactive maps menu and click on the “maps layers” and choose Snow Plow Tracking)