SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WXYZ) — After a snowstorm blew through metro Detroit Friday morning, drivers were forced to deal with slick roads, heavy snow and low visibility.
"This is some real bipolar weather. I don’t know if it’s the Aries coming in or the Pisces leaving. I don’t know which it is for real," said as he stopped for gas in Southfield.
Friday morning, around 30 crashes were reported on metro Detroit freeways.
"I didn’t think we’d get that much (snow) here either. I don’t know where it came from, but I wish it would go back," driver Paul Ayott said after getting on the roads in Macomb County around 8 a.m. Friday. "For a while, 50 feet, you couldn’t see because it was snowing that powdery little snow. It was no (salt) trucks out. I didn’t see a truck until about 9:30 (in the morning). That’s not to say they weren’t out, they just weren’t out where I was."
Several drivers echoes the same concerns of a lack of salt trucks on the roads to 7 Action News crews.
"Do you guys feel like the magnitude of this storm caught you off guard at all," 7 Action News reporter Whitney Burney asked.
"No, we expected (this). We had forecasts from the National Weather Service, our forecasting services, your meteorologists, so we knew it was going to come. We knew it was going to come hard,"
Bryson says they put the all-hands-on-deck call out for drivers around 3 a.m. and got all 109 of their trucks out by 5 a.m.
"It actually worked out fairly well this morning," Bryson said. "We got them in just before the snow started and they were able to get on the road as the snow was falling. That’s ideal. Unfortunately, when the snow falls very hard and rush hour is picking up and we have bumper to bumper traffic, that makes it very difficult."
The Macomb County Department of Roads says they ran into the same issue.
"We try and prep as best as possible. We can’t get out too early. So, it just depends when the snowfalls, the duration of the snowfall, if it’s a mixture of freezing rain, freezing temperatures," said Bryan Santo, who is the director of the Macomb County Road Department.
Santo says their team had all 60 salt trucks working to clear primary roads for much of the day.
"I think our crews were called in around 6 or 7 o'clock to start on the route as far as our salting and plowing of the roadways. We got an early start. We’ll keep our crews over into the evening as long as the duration of the storm continues," Santo said.
Both Macomb and Oakland counties say they're anticipating being on the roads overnight and possibly into the weekend as more snow is expected Friday evening.
