In eye of storm, Nash County readies to clear roads

Along big and back roads and in country towns around Rocky Mount on Friday, the brine trucks rolled and residents readied for the winter's first storm.

The state Department of Transportation put trucks and staff to be in position to clear anything that accumulates.

Before the snow starts to fall, dozens of trucks are spreading brine, the salt-and-water mixture used to make asphalt roads resist frozen precipitation, across Nash and Edgecombe counties. The DOT was also fueling up plows and trucks that spread salt and sand once snow is on the roads.

Many of the DOT's drivers were headed home from work at noon on Friday so that they could rest up for work that will extend through the night and into Saturday morning.

In Dortches, home of Smith's Red and White grocery store, locals broke the bread supply and put the squeeze on the milkman in stocking up for a few days of being homebound.

At the checkout lines, the clerks couldn't catch a break, either. Tommy Clark paid two visits to the store in two days. He thought he had bought the last loaf of bread.

By late Friday afternoon, shelves were almost bare.

"I heard there was no milk and no bread yesterday on Facebook," said Melissa Chafin. Red and White was her fifth stop of the day in the search for storm supplies.

"Each store has one thing for the winter preparation for the storm, so I went and got it," she said.

After the storm, temperatures are forecast to stay below freezing for days, which means anything that falls will stick around, keeping plows and salt trucks busy into the coming week.