Stay Safe - Yellow Warning for Snow and Ice

With Met Office yellow warnings for snow and ice over the weekend and into next week, Bedford Borough Council is reminding people to stay at home as much as possible and only travel if necessary.

Since the 1 January 2021, gritting crews have been out for over 30 runs at all times of day and night, spreading salt on priority roads across the Borough to keep people safe. Each priority run covers around 480km of road, and uses an average of 60 tonnes of salt.

With snow expected over the weekend, the Council's gritting teams will be on standby, ready to go gritting at the right time to have most impact.

Professionally qualified officers collate information gathered by weather stations across the Borough, weather forecast updates, and satellite imagery software. All of this information predicts road temperatures, whether it will snow, and what time these things are expected happen and that dictates when gritting runs happen.

The salt does not directly melt the snow. It works by traffic mixing it in to create a salty solution which doesn't freeze as quickly as water, which reduces the build-up of snow.

With low levels of traffic currently using the roads due to the national lockdown, gritting is unfortunately less effective than normal as there are far fewer vehicles around to 'traffic in' the salt by crushing and spreading it across the road surface.

Councillor Charles Royden, Portfolio Holder for Highways said "Our crews have been working really hard this winter with heavy snowfall seen recently and more being forecast for this weekend. Salting the roads is not working as well as usual with less traffic to crush the salt into the road surface, but our crews will be closely monitoring the forecast and will be heading out for all needed gritting runs across the weekend. With a yellow weather warning in place over the weekend and into next week, please be safe. Stay at home as much as you can, and travel carefully if you do have to go out."

Visit www.bedford.gov.uk/winterupdates and follow @grittertweets on twitter for forecasts and updates from the gritting crews throughout the winter.