ARKANSAS, USA — With a winter storm on the horizon, concerns are growing over holiday travel in Arkansas. This comes during some of the busiest travel days of the year.
AAA expects about 112 million Americans to travel the week of Christmas, making for a very busy week on the roads and skies. Officials say the biggest piece of advice for travelers is when you see winter weather, stay home if you can.
"Give the road crews a chance to clear off the roads, put salt down whatever's needed," said Nick Chabarria, spokesperson for AAA. "So, you know, certainly with Thursday's anticipated winter precept, you know, if you were planning to travel that day, and you're able to modify your travel plans, that's probably going to be your best bet."
Chabarria expects Friday and Saturday to be the busiest travel days this week for those driving to their destinations. If you have to get on the road despite bad weather conditions, he encourages people to prepare their vehicles now to make sure it's winter ready.
The first thing to do is make sure your tires have the proper tread depth and are properly inflated.
"One of the biggest reasons people call AAA in the winter time for assistance is for dead or disabled batteries," Chabarria said. "If your battery's more than three years old, we recommend getting it tested. You know, before taking a road trip that way, you know if you can replace it preemptively, rather than having it die on you when you're out."
The Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) will be pretreating roads on Wednesday but will be closely monitoring the forecast in case things change.
"We are preparing for the bitter cold Thursday, Friday, Saturday, a Christmas Day, you know, it has a, takes its toll on our equipment, not to mention personnel," said Dave Parker with ARDOT.
Parker says when the temperatures drop as low as they're expected to this week, they have to adjust the ratio of the salt and water.
"That’s why we're going to pretreat Wednesday, early Thursday when the temperatures are still in those, you know, relatively normal ranges of you know, mid to high 30s. Low 40s because once it gets single digit Thursday night, Friday morning, the salt brine does not work as well as it normally does," Parker said.
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