‘Stay put.’ Triangle roads covered with snow and ice. Driving discouraged
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Officials urge residents to avoid travel as sleet, ice and freezing rain arrive.
- NCDOT spread 3.2M gallons of brine; local crews pretreated city and town streets.
- Prolonged cold and black ice risk will extend cleanup and hazards into the week.
Road crews pre-treated streets and highways with brine and salt in central North Carolina for days in anticipation of this weekend’s winter storm, but it wasn’t enough to make travel safe, state officials say.
Roads in the Triangle and surrounding counties, even interstate highways, were covered in snow and ice Sunday, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. A mix of sleet, freezing rain and snow is expected to continue on and off throughout the day, meaning road conditions aren’t likely to improve for a while.
Sidewalks and other paths have fared little better.
“If you must go outdoors, try to stay on grassy areas instead of the more treacherous hard surfaces,” the Town of Garner said in a statement Sunday morning.
Gov. Josh Stein and other state officials urged people to avoid driving once the sleet, ice and freezing rain began falling Saturday evening.
“Depending on where you live, it’s about time to stay put,” Stein said during a press conference Saturday. “Please, do not be out on the roads unless it’s absolutely necessary. That’s for your own safety as well as the safety of the NCDOT road crews, the State Highway Patrol, the power company line crews and other emergency workers who are already hard at work.”
Traffic was generally light Sunday morning, which helped road crews do their work, said Doug McNeal, NCDOT maintenance engineer for the seven-county region that includes Durham and Wake. The state has 275 plow trucks spreading salt and sand in the region, McNeal said, though with Sunday morning temperatures in the low 20s roads were still covered in many places.
“With cold temperatures, it delays some of the activation of the salt,” McNeal said at 10:30 a.m. “So we’re still pretty white out there.”
McNeal said NCDOT has about 25 “cut-and-shove” crews on standby to clear downed trees if freezing rain becomes a problem later in the day and evening. Otherwise, crews would work to clear snow and ice from the most heavily traveled roads first, he said.
“We’ll definitely be focusing on the interstates and the main roads,” he said. “Residential subdivisions, it’s going to be a while.”
With continued cold temperatures, cleanup will take a while
NCDOT had spread 3.2 million gallons of brine on roads statewide by Friday morning, and local crews treated city and town streets with hundreds of thousands of gallons more. That should make it easier for utility workers to move about and for road crews to clean up after the storm moves out.
But it wasn’t enough to prevent roads from being icy during the storm, particularly on Sunday.
“If you choose to drive in the conditions that we anticipate will impact our roads, you are rolling the dice with poor odds,” said Daniel Johnson, the secretary of Transportation. “The risk of crashing in these conditions is high, which can lead to serious injury or being stranded in a disabled vehicle in bitterly cold conditions.”
Cleanup from the storm will take a while, Stein and Johnson said, because of unusually cold weather after the sleet, rain and snow stop falling. Temperatures are expected to bottom out in the Triangle near the single digits Tuesday morning and dip well below freezing every night through the week.
“Black ice will remain a risk in many places into next week, especially on bridges, overpasses and shaded areas,” Stein said.
Transit systems cancel service
Triangle transit systems parked their buses during the storm. GoDurham, GoRaleigh, GoTriangle and Chapel Hill Transit did not operate Sunday. Chapel Hill Transit, GoDurham and GoTriangle say they will remain closed on Monday as well, while GoRaleigh will operate a Sunday schedule from noon to 6 p.m. on Monday.
All Piedmont and Carolinian passenger trains have also been canceled for Sunday, according to NCDOT.
To see the latest road conditions, go to drivenc.gov/.
This story was originally published January 24, 2026 at 3:05 PM.
