ST. LOUIS — Everyone is thinking about road conditions Thursday night as a winter storm wraps up. Road crews from Missouri and Illinois are asking for patience as they continue to clear the snow.
The Missouri Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation says don't expect to see clear roadways Friday morning. Although crews are working into the night, the weather isn't cooperating enough to have that quick of a turnaround.
That's why they're asking you to do your best to stay home just one more day to give plows plenty of space to clear the roads. In Missouri, snowplows have covered some 800,000 miles of ground.
But as Thursday went on, more people decided to venture out, leading to hundreds of stranded drivers, and in a few cases, drivers getting hurt after crashing. Authorities say most of these involved people driving too fast for conditions.
Although interstates may appear clear, that's not the case on all of the roadways.
"It's not clear out there. You need to be careful out there. Those areas of concern for us are ramps, intersections, places like that we haven't gone over a lot, the minor roads, the side streets. Those are locations - we've been over everything - but as we talked about, the snow is drifting, it's coming back out there. It's continuing to snow today. It's still on the roadway so everyone needs to be careful if they're out,” Bob Becker of MoDOT said Thursday afternoon.
In Illinois, different parts of the state have lent snow plows and blowers to help with the region. That's putting transportation crews in a better position than they've been in since the snowstorm started.
But again, roads Friday morning are not expected to be clear due to dropping temperatures overnight and heavy winds that are not making things any easier.
"It's a very powdery snow. It's moving around. It's actually blowing. In areas where there's accumulation on pavement, it's actually coming off tires and the wind is picking it up and moving it across lanes,” Joe Monroe of IDOT said.
IDOT says it hopes to get much of its work done Friday. MoDOT says its crews are preparing to work into the weekend.
Both agencies are asking that you give their snowplows plenty of space if you have to hit the road. Otherwise, they could really use fewer cars on the roads for just one more day.