When We Salt
During the winter months the County Council receives a detailed local road surface weather forecast at midday every day. When a forecast of wet and freezing road conditions is received, precautionary salting of first priority roads is carried out.
Salting normally begins at 19.00 hours for an overnight frost and at 04.00 hours for a dawn frost. It can take up to an hour to mobilise the contractor vehicles and drivers and the salting operation on the first priority roads generally takes up to 2½ hours to complete.
The salting operation is generally completed before peak travel time. In the event of unplanned treatment during peak travelling periods, traffic may cause some delay to this operation.
There is, of course, no such thing as a typical winter, but over an average winter salting would be carried out on about 45 nights, or 1 night in 3.
Salting & Rainfall
Heavy rain washes salt off the treated surfaces and when this coincides with freezing temperatures it is difficult to time the treatment effectively.
Our drivers and vehicles may have to be held on standby to salt once the rain has stopped. This means that there may be ice or frost on some roads until the treatment is complete.
Icelert
The County Council uses the Icelert® weather condition system as an aid to deciding when to salt roads. The system gathers information automatically from the County Council's own 'mini' weather stations which are strategically sited on roads throughout Hampshire. Computer links with the weather forecaster enable this information to be analysed and used to prepare accurate weather forecasts. These are vital for highway managers when they are deciding on the right time to carry out salting on priority routes.
Icelert® is a registered trademark of Findlay Irvine. All rights acknowledged.