KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee's roads could get dangerously icy Thursday night and Friday morning if we see a significant amount of wintry mix or freezing rain.
Another area of low pressure moving across the Southeast could bring a mix of rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow to parts of East Tennessee starting early Thursday night.
Tennessee Department of Transportation spokesperson Mark Nagi said crews are monitoring the weather, asking people across East Tennessee to do the same and check road conditions before heading out.
"The TDOT Smartway system is a terrific resource for people to use. It gives real-time information as to what's going on on Tennessee interstates and state routes. You'll see if there's traffic backups or crashes," he said.
Nagi said crews are ready to go for Thursday night and Friday, but said there's not much more they can do to pretreat roads because rain would wash away the salt and brine, limiting its effectiveness. He said the interstates and heavily traveled state roads are in good shape right now, but that could change if there's a significant amount of ice.
"If we are supposed to get a lot of rain, putting down supplies would be counterproductive. In this case, there is already a lot of salt on the roads already anyway," he said. "When snow and ice start to form on roadways, then our crews go back over those roads, spreading salt and plowing."
Nagi said the best thing people can do Thursday night: stay at home.
"The advice that we give during and before any winter weather event is if you don't have to be on the roadways, stay off the roadways. That's the safest place that you can be is at home," he said. "What that also does is it means that there's less vehicles on the roadway, which allows our crews to do their jobs more efficiently, get their work done quicker, and most importantly, to do their jobs in a safer manner."
Chad Weth, public service director for the city of Knoxville, said plow and salt teams were out in full force to continue clearing roads on Thursday ahead of the potential wintry mix and freezing rain that's set to arrive.
"So today is really the first day that the weather is in our favor," he said. "We are really plowing, salting where needed... all of our all streets, really, we're going to hopefully even get into some neighborhood streets as we've already started to do and will continue to do well into the evening tonight."
Weth said the city will be monitoring the weather to see how Thursday night shakes out. He said people should continue to hunker down inside and remain patient as we get through this last bout of wintry weather before the warm-up next week.
"I think you know, patience is still key. You know, I know it's hard when people have been, you know, stuck inside for four days. You know, obviously, if you have an emergency please dial 911," he said. "I'm really proud to say that with our assistance and public works and emergency services, there's not been a call that we have not visited."
Jim Snowden, the senior director of engineering and public works for Knox County, said he believes it's been 10 years or more since we've seen this kind of accumulation and impact. Knox County crews will be out salting and plowing roads that still have snow on them.
"We've had folks here, continuously rotating in and out, of course, since Saturday morning. So, you know, we've been it's been, it's been a rough five days for the highway department," he said. " I assure you if it's a main road, it has been treated multiple times. And unfortunately, just due to the weather conditions and the amount of snow, it just hasn't been able to get clear as we'd like. So we are working hard and will continue to work throughout this weekend."