With winter weather in the forecast for Wayne County on Friday evening into Saturday morning, the Wayne County DOT office began preparing roads around the county on Wednesday.

Pre-treatment on primary roads around Wayne County began on Wednesday with the focus shifting to secondary roads on Thursday.

“Our plan has been we’ve been doing pre-treatment (Wednesday),” said Wayne County Maintenance Engineer Jeff Wilkins. “We pre-treated all of our primary roads today and (Thursday) we’re going to hit some of the secondary routes that we consider bare pavement and high-traffic volume. We’ll finish that up (Thursday), and then we’ll come in on Friday and have our plows and salt ready, and pretty much just wait for whatever the forecast says. If it comes down, then we’ll push it out of the roads and spread some salt.”

With varying precipitation totals predicted across multiple forecasts for Wayne County, and with certain forecasts calling for just snow, while other forecasts call for a mix of snow and ice, Wilkins noted the Wayne County DOT office relies on numerous forecasts while developing a plan.

On Wednesday evening, the National Weather Service in Raleigh predicted Wayne County would receive an inch or less precipitation.

“We look at multiple sources and just see what they’re all saying and take maybe an average guesstimation, but we always plan for the worst regardless,” Wilkins said. “We plan for three inches of snow or more, and if we don’t get any of that, that’s just fine because we’re ready for the worst of it.”

With this particular winter storm predicted to reach Wayne County on Friday evening, the Wayne County DOT office will bring employees back on Friday evening to ensure they have an adequate amount of employees on hand when the weather arrives.

“We do have to work with our staff to make sure that we have people here and work with their hours because it’s outside of their usual work hours,” Wilkins said. “But we’ll bring in everybody later on Friday, and have them stay through the night just in case because that’s when it’s supposed to start snowing, just to make sure that we have the adequate amount of staff to address if it does snow.”

Wilkins encourages Wayne County residents to avoid driving on Friday evening and Saturday morning if at all possible, particularly with ice in the forecast.

“I would tell people that if they have the option not to drive then stay home,” Wilkins said. “There will be ice, ice is more likely than snow right now. And even though we put out the brine on some of these major routes, we can’t touch all the roads, so you never know what you might run into. If you can stay home, that’s what I would do.”