By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
You may be wondering why the streets in Hays were not pretreated with a brine mixture prior to this winter storm as it moved in Wednesday night.
City commissioner Shaun Musil said at Thursday afternoon's commission meeting that he'd had a lot of people asking about it.
Heavily traveled Hays streets are usually treated when snow is in the weather forecast, with easily detectable wet lines left marking the path of the deicing trucks.
The decision made by Hays Public Works Director Jesse Rohr, was based on a matrix of how well the mixture works in low temperatures.
Brine is cheap, according to City Manager Toby Dougherty, and usually very effective, but this time, it was just too cold.
"The reason the public works director didn't put it down is because the forecast was for the cold temps to move in ahead of the snow.
"Brine works very good but when you get close to zero, all the brine does is act like an attractant for the moisture," Dougherty explained.
"He was concerned that if they had put the brine down in the street, even with what little snow we had, it all would have stuck and immediately turned to ice with the sub-zero temperatures. Once it's ice, it's very had to get off.
"What happened was there was some moisture that came down naturally [Wednesday] and when the wind hit, the cold temperatures kind of evaporated the ice that was there."
Dougherty said he supports Rohr's decision and "our streets were a lot better off [Thursday] morning because of it."