Meanwhile, with even the slight chance of snow forecasted, road crews are gearing up.

Workers with the Georgia Department of Transportation mixed up batch after batch of brine and readied about 30 tanker trucks. Each one holds about 5,000 gallons of the saltwater mixture. They filled additional tanks with another 150,000 gallons of pre-mixed brine to have it on standby to refill trucks.

“The staging time is the most critical,” explained GDOT State Maintenance Engineer Dale Brantley. “We want everything in its location when the storm starts.”

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This is the third winter that GDOT has had the equipment to pre-treat the highways after the state was caught by surprise in January 2014 and many drivers were stranded on icy roads by a winter storm.

“Even though the forecast is for snow, we always know it’s going to be ice and that’s what we have to treat and be prepared for that ice to come,” said Brantley.

Based on rush hour and when the storm is expected to arrive, GDOT drivers will hit the roads sometime Friday to begin coating the pavement.

“We’re watching the weather. We’ve got to pick that window of opportunity when we can get out there between when the storm’s going to come in and also with traffic,” Brantley said. “So, we’re trying to find a precise window of opportunity to be out there are start our pre-treatment operations.”

GDOT asks drivers to give the trucks extra room to work once they begin pre-treating the interstates.

Ready to roll. @cobbcountygovt will put brine on bridges Thursday #fox5atl #fox5storm pic.twitter.com/iizuXuXaXB

— denisedillon (@DillonFox5) January 5, 2017
The individual cities and counties are also preparing for this round of winter weather. Cobb County officials said they have a lot of new equipment and they are ready for most anything.

“We are 100 times better than we were four years ago,” said Bill Shelton, Cobb County’s Roads and Maintenance Manager.

The county has a million dollars’ worth of new equipment.

“We've quadrupled our fleet, we have 4-wheel drive, we’ve got plows, we’ve got brine, a brine maker, brine equipment,” said Shelton.

All of it was bought with SPLOST dollars. After the storm that paralyzed the county and most of metro Atlanta a few years ago, the county knew it was time to buy newer, bigger and faster equipment.

“We can treat all the major roads in the county in about four hours. We couldn’t do that before, before it took all day,” said Shelton.

Crews have already taken the equipment through a practice run, and it went smoothly. Managers made a few tweaks to some of the routes, and now they’re confident they’re ready to roll so that people like Sarah Hanks can relax and enjoy her snow day.

“There’s a snowman in store if it snows and I will be home to enjoy it with a roaring fire,” said Hanks.

Cobb County plans to brine all the bridges starting Thursday morning after rush hour. They also have an online map which shows which roads have been treated. Once a road is treated, a snowflake will appear in the area. The map can be found at cobbcommute.org.

Since the world’s most traveled airport is expected to be affected this weekend by the winter weather, several airlines are making accommodations.

Delta Air Lines has issued a travel waiver for Friday and Saturday for travelers departing or flying to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The airline said they will waive fees for a one-time ticket change. A full list of those areas affected can be found on their website.



Southwest and United airlines also have similar travel advisories on their websites.

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