Jan. 11—Officials with the Morgan County Emergency Management Agency and the city of Decatur reported hazardous road conditions on Friday and encouraged motorists to stay at home through the weekend as low temperatures will cause icy conditions.
Jonathan Warner, director of the Morgan County EMA, said he received reports of multiple wrecks on Friday morning and said vehicles were sliding off roadways and into medians.
“All the roads in Morgan County are hazardous and there should not be any unnecessary travel,” Warner said. “This has been forecasted for a while now, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. People should just stay at home.”
Garbage normally collected on Friday routes will instead be picked up Monday, Mayor Tab Bowling said.
Warner said there was a wreck on Interstate 65 near the Thompson Road exit where a vehicle slid off the road and another wreck across from the Hartselle Lowe’s on U.S. 31 and one in the Flint area off U.S. 31.
U.S. “31 and (Interstate) 65 are the roads that have been treated, so if people are having wrecks on those, then the side roads are just going to be that much worse,” Warner said.
Warner said the Alabama Department of Transportation has been pretreating roads this week and he witnessed them out on I-65 on Friday morning with plows, scraping snow away from roadways.
He said he encourages Morgan County residents to be mindful of the snow and ice and not put themselves in situations where they would need to call emergency services.
“Emergency responders have enough to deal with rather than dealing with unnecessary travel and more people being on the roads than what should be,” Warner said. “We have to make sure we take care of our 911, and by doing that, we don’t call 911 for power outages or road conditions or anything like that. We keep that for true emergencies.”
Decatur City Engineer Carl Prewitt said Friday afternoon that roads in the city remained “slushy,” with conditions mostly unchanged since the morning. He said a flatbed truck began that morning actively spreading sand on the roads to improve traction.
“Whatever is wet, if it gets below freezing obviously, it’s going to get slick again,” Prewitt said. “We’re doing the best we can to clear a path at least for folks to get around on the main roads.”
Prewitt said sand has been spread on the roads near the main campus and Parkway campus of Decatur Morgan Hospital, as well as in the Burningtree area and roads in Southwest Decatur like Chula Vista Drive and Danville Road.
“We’re still working at it and we’ll work through the night and hopefully it will warm up more (Saturday) and improve,” Prewitt said.
National Weather Service meteorologist Kurt Weber said that with Saturday’s high temperatures barely rising above freezing, he doubts there will be much improvement in travel conditions. He said all state roads were closed in Jackson County, but he has not received any reports of roads being closed in Morgan, Limestone or Lawrence counties.
“People may be able to get out briefly for an hour or two (Saturday) afternoon, but it’s still going to be icy, probably all morning and especially in shady and sheltered locations,” Weber said. “It may be one or two degrees colder, so it may not improve much. I wouldn’t really advise traveling (Saturday) night because it’s going to ice back over.”
— wesley.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2442.