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Winter Gritting
Denbighshire County Council spread salt to prevent ice from forming on almost 400 miles of roads on every night when frost or icy conditions are forecast. This equates to 28% of the total road network within the county, which is close to the national average.
Accurate local weather forecasts are provided by Metro Group who, in addition to using all the regular technology to produce these forecasts, also look at information from temperature sensors set into the road at Bodfari and Plymog near Loggerheads.
Apart from the huge cost it would be impractical to pre-treat all roads, as the salt used has to be crushed by traffic to make it effective, for various reasons we concentrate on the most heavily trafficed roads. (See attached map).
Pre-salting is generally carried out commencing at either 6pm or 6am dependant on the exact time of freezing and is timed to miss the peak traffic times. Our 12 gritters aim to complete their routes within 2.5 hours.
No matter how accurate the forecast there are situations where we cannot salt the roads prior to the onset of icy conditions:
- When rain is followed by rapidly clearing skies, salting is normally deferred until the rain stops to prevent it being washed off.
- Dawn frost occurs on dry roads. When early morning dew falls on a cold road and freezes on impact. It is impossible to forecast with any accuracy when this will occur.
- Rush hour snowfall. When rain turns to snow coinciding with rush hour traffic, early salting cannot take place as it would wash off and gritters cannot make progress due to traffic congestion.
We will however, always carry out salting and ploughing to remove snow and ice on the designated network (see attached map). This is not ideal as salt takes longer to act once ice has formed.
(pdf, 357.87 KB) Gritting Routes