Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993 TAG: 9312290124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
More precisely, the problem was what he couldn't see.
"This is the worst possible weather," said Weaver, scanning for virtually invisible ice patches on roads near Roanoke Regional Airport.
Freezing rain is the road equivalent of a virus, a stealthy, hard-to-spot killer that's hard to obliterate. "You can't do nothing with what you can't see," he grumbled.
Snow you can see. Drivers fear it. Road crews put salt on it. The salt forms a brine between the road and the snow, and they plow the snow away.
Freezing rain lurks transparently. Drivers speed along normally till ice spins them into orbit.
By 6 p.m., Weaver got his snow. Something he could deal with. Something he could shovel off roads to make them safer. "We'll be able to start pushing it now," he said cheerfully.
Many stores and offices in the Roanoke and New River valleys closed early Tuesday afternoon as workers scurried home. State police in Salem reported hazardous roads but no serious accidents by evening.
They reported about 75 traffic accidents in the Richmond area by midafternoon. Downtown Richmond was nearly deserted then, as office workers tried to beat a second wave of freezing rain predicted for dusk.
Tuesday night's snow in Roanoke meant taxpayers would save a little money. Freezing rain washes salt away and crews must replenish it constantly. Snow holds the salt in place.
Weaver's 11 snowplow drivers had spread 200 tons of salt on icy spots by mid-afternoon Tuesday - three times what they would have dumped if there'd been just snow.
"A storm like this for 24 hours would cost as much as a blizzard," he said.
Old-timers like Weaver, in his 33rd year with the Virginia Department of Transportation, go by how much ice forms on the antennas of their trucks. Tuesday, the ones on his highway-crew-yellow Dodge Power Ram were thickly encased.
His drivers develop an eye for ice - a frosty hint of it along the grassy shoulder means there's likely some on the road. They know the coldest, shadiest road stretches where ice forms. All day Tuesday they applied salt to those spots.
Weaver is superintendent of the Transportation Department's Airport Area Headquarters. His crew maintains roads in North Roanoke County, Vinton and along some of the most hazardous roads - Interstates 81 and 581, and Virginia 116 over Windy Gap Mountain.
They worked in the snow and slush Christmas night and Sunday morning, too, and knew more bad weather was coming. "As long as the weatherman's calling for anything, nobody can relax," Weaver says.
When the sun shines, they work regular day hours. In bad weather, they alternate in 12-hour shifts around the clock. "It's hard to describe the credit these truck drivers deserve," Weaver said.
Staff writer Steve Foster and the Associated Press contributed information for this story.
by CNB