HARRISBURG, Pa. — Power companies were bracing for a long night ahead of Winter Storm Uri’s arrival. The forecast called for a mix of rain and sleet.
Freezing rain causes more damage to power lines than regular snow due to its weight.
“When it gets on lines it can hang like icicles and can break lines. More commonly it takes tree branches and breaks them, bends them onto lines or it can even knock over entire trees,” said Todd Myers, spokesperson for Met-Ed.
Met-Ed had all its storm crews out, plus all the crews that usually work on repairs and trim trees around lines. The crews worked shifts of 16 hours on, eight hours off.
Other utilities sometimes send additional help during severe weather events, but none were available Monday night as outages were expected throughout the region.
“We have plenty to worry about throughout Pennsylvania but we can’t look for help from the South like we can sometimes with ice storms because they’re experiencing some very unusual monumental weather of their own,” Myers said.
Outages could take longer to fix because of the dangerous driving conditions, Myers warned.
PennDOT, meanwhile, enacted Tier 1 restrictions starting at 6 p.m. on many highways. The restrictions include a ban on empty tractor trailers and the speed limited reduced to 45 miles per hour.
When there’s freezing rain, drivers should assume the road is icy, not wet, PennDOT officials said.
“If you hit black ice please don’t hit your brakes. If you start to go into a slide you turn your wheel slightly in the direction of that slide. You don’t want to counter-turn because that’s when people start spinning. The best thing to do is really take your foot off the gas and let the car slow down on its own,” said PennDOT spokesperson Fritzi Schreffler.
PennDOT crews came in at 4 p.m. They had their full fleet on 310 trucks out on the roads.
Instead of the usual salt brine used during severe winter weather, the crews used a special anti-skid mixture with salt brine and gravel, meant to add some traction to the road.