INDIANAPOLIS -- Three people were killed, over 30 injured and hundreds were left stranded from the wintry mix that left Indiana roads ice-covered over the weekend.
Will Wingfield with the Indiana Department of Transportation said the particular conditions from Friday night into Saturday morning created a nightmare. When pavement temperatures dipped into the 20s, the air temperature remained warm enough for rain - meaning that it froze on contact.
"We had every one of our trucks and every one of our resources on this issue," said Wingfield. "This is the type of storm that overwhelms our routes which run every 2-3 hours, things were freezing on contact."
Wingfield said INDOT has not identified anything that they could have done differently to prevent those icy conditions, because the storm isn't something you would normally deal with.
"This is a type of storm you might see once in a decade," said Wingfield.
He said INDOT did have hundreds of trucks out over the weekend, but their crews also had difficulty navigating the traffic backups and dangerous roads when the temperatures dropped.
