Friday, January 29, 2010

Salt brine on the streets ... ugh

In the past, winter weather in the Shenandoah Valley would bring out VDOT salt trucks. When salt brine first began showing up on the streets around the SWAC area, word was it was more environmentally friendly -- someone even claimed it was a beet juice base -- and VDOT was able to treat road surfaces before bad weather hit.

Snow in the forecast? Even if we hadn't heard the weatherman, it was obvious that inclement weather was on the way because of the streaks on the roads.

With this weekend's huge winter storm expected over Virginia, the brine streaks began showing up Thursday afternoon in preparation for snow, and today they were on just about every road we traveled.

A friend clued me in about two weeks ago to the problems when he suggested I may want to get my vehicle washed of all the white salt/brine/dirt after weeks of snow on the ground, and said car owners had been having trouble with corrosion, especially on the undercarriage. He said the work vehicles with the company he worked for had been having issues with corrosion from the brine used by VDOT.

Then today I read Yankee Phil's post about that briny stuff with even more explanation of it.

Buy stock in car washes....

No comments: