Nathan Beitler/MDN A truck drives slowly down Minot’s Front Street Southeast through ice and slush buildup in the misty early evening of Tuesday, Dec. 9. Freezing rain in the early morning hours left roads slick and forced local schools and government services to close down for the day.

Mild weather helped street and road crews working to address icy conditions Tuesday, Dec. 9, but battling the aftermath of Mother Nature was a challenge, according to supervisors of both Minot and Ward County efforts.

“It’s been a challenge,” said Kevin Braaten, street superintendent with Minot Public Works. “We started running five sanders this morning and, obviously, that wasn’t keeping up, so we deployed our road graders to try to peel some of this ice off of the roadway.”

The North Dakota Department of Transportation also had crews scraping ice from highways in the above-freezing temperatures in the Minot area.

“We are fortunate we got the temperatures we got today. Otherwise, this could have been a very long-term event,” said Jody Luck, maintenance superintendent with the Minot District of the North Dakota Department of Transportation.

The City of Minot’s focus Tuesday was priority snow routes, although city crews also attacked the hills and were getting into residential areas to sand certain intersections and enough of the streets to ensure people can get to arterial routes.

Braaten said residents appeared to be taking the travel advisory seriously and staying home, which is safest for them and helps assist with street efforts.

“It’s very slippery,” Braaten said. “It’s hard for us to stop, just like the public. There are some challenging hills that are really steep that we cannot come down. So what we end up doing is backing up them and actually sanding as we back up them.”

Six sanders were operating Tuesday afternoon, using a sand and salt mixture, Braaten said.

“All of our sanding kept everything in the slush form, and now that we know that the temperatures are going to drop overnight, we need to get that material off or else we’re going to be dealing with ice again,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

“This is going to be a couple days event because of the amount of ice that is out there right now. We anticipate being out there – kind of like today – in full force again and trying to make the roadway safe,” he said of Wednesday’s plan.

A full contingent of Ward County highway crews worked steadily on the county’s paved roads Tuesday to scrape ice and spread salt and sand.

“It’s really slow going because it’s so icy,” said Ward County Highway Engineer Dana Larsen. “Even our trucks are having a hard time getting around.”

He said sanders were sometimes using the middle of the road to ensure they stayed on it and at times distributed sand while backing up a hill because it was too icy to go forward.

County crews had planned to work as late as possible and then be back at it on Wednesday as necessary, depending on what weather conditions leave.

Luck called it one of the worst ice events he’s seen. Working since the rain started at 4 a.m., the NDDOT dealt with issues around keeping its own equipment from sliding off the road. Salt treatments resolved the ice but left wet roads with potential to either dry on their own or freeze overnight, depending on weather conditions.

Luck said the department will be watching the situation Wednesday to address any continued ice problems.