The Iowa DOT has reopened Interstate 80 from Altoona to Coralville and from West Des Moines to Council Bluffs. Interstate 35 from Ames north to the border is back open along with. other highways closed by the blizzard.
DOT winter operations director Craig Bargfrede says they closed roads because they didn’t want people trying to drive through the storm. “Visibility was the huge driving factor for all of this. We’ve been monitoring this forecast for about three or four days. And we could just see that we had a combination of light fluffy snow, winds in the 50 to 60 mile an hour range,” he says.
Bargfrede says they made the decision to preemptively close I-35. “Fortunately, that really turned out to be a very good decision for us. We understand the impacts that we have when we make that decision to travelers, but ultimately, we did not have any kind of incidents or lots of cars or trucks stuck on the side of the road that had to be pulled out, towed out or damaged,” Bargfrede says.
He says the conditions were tough across most of the state. “I don’t think we ended up getting as much snow as what had been forecasted, but it really doesn’t take much with the kind of winds that we saw yesterday to make it a dangerous situation with such low visibility,” Bargfrede says. “We had reports from some of our operators and even from the State Patrol that in certain places when they were out and about yesterday, they couldn’t even see the front of the hood of the truck.”
Bargfrede says the storm started with rain that prevented them from using pretreatment, and then it turned to ice and snow. “That snow and ice really bonded to the pavement and makes it difficult for us to remove. Then we get these temperatures in the teens and single digits like we did. our treatments aren’t as effective as we typically are,” he says.
Bargfrede says the winds died down and the sun is out, so they should now make more progress. “We do have the sun out, and the sun does have quite a bit of power. So that is helping us do a little bit of melting, and it is helping some of our treatments be a bit more active and effective,” he says.
The forecast is calling for temperatures to continue to warm up throughout, the week, and Bargfrede says that will help get rid of the snow and ice.