Lincolnshire’s gritting team has been getting a real grip across the county in the ice and cold.
It’s been a brutal week of sub-zero temperatures across the county – but LCC’s gritting team has been more than up to the challenge, breaking records along the way.
With the lowest road surface temperature over the past few days plunging to a polar-like -7°C, and daylight temperatures struggling around the zero mark, it’s taken a Herculean effort and the entire fleet of LCC gritters to keep things moving.
LCC gritting boss Darrell Redford said: “This cold snap has been pretty brutal, with the coldest road surface temperature we dealt with being -7°C at Cadwell Park between Louth and Horncastle.
“That’s an extremely low surface temperature to deal with, and the rest of the county wasn’t much warmer than that for a large part of the past week.
“We’ve never seen a road temperature as low as that, this early in the year, before. Thankfully, our prediction data was absolutely spot on, and our gritter teams worked very hard around the clock in the right areas to keep lots of routes open right across Lincolnshire.
“Our crews know what they are doing, and we have brilliant, vital weather information from our own stations around the county that helps us deliver the best schedule possible to keep the road network moving.
“We’re ready for the next round of cold weather and will use all our resources again as part of our tireless efforts to keep Lincolnshire on the road over the coming winter.”
The data from the past few days tells the local frozen story in real detail.
Prior to the snow arriving in the county on Monday night, LCC gritters carried out two runs across Lincolnshire to get salt down. This was to prepare the road before it froze, helping to clear the snow from the roads.
Those two runs alone cost £40,000 in materials and saw us put down 746 tonnes of salt – and that was just for the preparatory round of gritter passes.
From Tuesday morning (after the snow hit) until today (Friday), we have carried out seven separate runs using 1,917 tonnes of salt – that’s around £100,000 worth of the specially-mined grip helper.
Since Sunday night (18 November) to today (Friday), we have covered a massive 29,892 miles gritting in Lincolnshire. That’s a bit more than it takes to go all the way around the Earth! And just this week, we’ve put down a staggering 2,664 tonnes of salt.
All of the LCC gritting fleet has been used over the past few days, meaning that 43 gritters were out doing their impressive best. Thankfully, we didn’t need our four reserve gritters, which are kept on standby in case of a problem. We can’t leave a route ungritted, so if a live problem happens, one of the four reserve gritters is quickly sent out to take over where needed. Having the reserve machines ready to go means an absolutely minimal amount of disruption to the roads in need of salt.
In total, the LCC gritting team has delivered 387 gritter runs over the recent cold days, ensuring that hundreds of routes remain open and usable by the county’s traffic network.
By the numbers: Lincolnshire’s highs and lows on the temp scale
Saturday night 16 November/Sunday morning 17 November
- Coldest site: A153 Cadwell = 0.7°C at 07:10
- Warmest site: A17 Swineshead = 4.8°C at 07:10
Sunday night 17 November/Monday morning 18 November
- Coldest site: A153 Cadwell = -2.4°C at 07:10
- Warmest site: A17 Swineshead = 1.7°C at 07:20
Monday night 18 November/Tuesday morning 19 November (night it snowed)
- Coldest site: A631 Caenby Corner = -1.8°C at 04:10
- Warmest site: A17 Swineshead = 0°C at 01:00
Tuesday night 19 November/Wednesday morning 20 November
- Coldest site: A153 Cadwell = -4.4°C at 07:00
- Warmest site: A17 Swineshead = -1.2°C at 05:00
Wednesday night 20 November/Thursday morning 21 November
- Coldest site: A153 Cadwell = -7°C at 07:00
- Warmest site: A17 Swineshead = -2.4°C at 05:00
Thursday night 21 November/Friday morning 22 November
- Coldest site: A153 Cadwell = -4.4°C at 00:10
- Warmest site: A17 Swineshead = -0.3°C at 00:10