Crews ready as second day of ice sticks to West Tennessee

JACKSON, Tenn. — The second round of winter weather has already started, and after getting through the first round of rain, electric crews are preparing for another night of winter precipitation.

Energy crews are bringing in even more staff to be fully prepared for any outages over the next two days.

Leslie Jones, the Operations Manager for the Jackson Energy Authority, explained some of their procedures.

“We do outage drills and just winter weather drills for each different utility so we are prepared to handle the weather when it gets here. All of our equipment is fully functional, and we have extra staff,” Jones said.

JEA had little to no outages Monday night. For Gibson EMC, there were a number of members without power, but it was later restored.

“We have staff that are on call 24 hours a day to make sure that we can meet all of our utility needs, and we want members to, for sure, stay safe. And if they see a down powerline, to call it in and definitely not to touch it,” Jones said.

If you do plan on leaving your home in the next couple of days, before you hit the roads, there are a few ways you can keep yourself and others safe when travelling.

“You may want to prepare and give yourself say three to four car lengths versus, two or three car lengths. Any amount of time that you can give yourself for breaking or allowing the vehicle to slow down so you don’t have to slam on the breaks during ice will definitely keep you much safer,” said Joshua Burns Jr., the Service Manager at Old Hickory Car Care.

Driving slower and creating space between you and other drivers can help prevent accidents.

And with the help of crews from the Tennessee Department of Transportation, the use of salt and brine can also help you get to your destination safely.

“With ice and with the temperatures, you know, we do add a little bit of a calcium fluoride addictive,” said Nichole Lawrence, the Community Relations Officer for TDOT. “The calcium and chloride helps whatever falls better.”

Throughout the night, TDOT crews will be coming in and out to make sure roads and bridges are safer for drivers.

If you do have to leave, make sure you drive with caution and remember to give yourself some room between you and the vehicles around you.

You can check for outages with Gibson EMC here.

You can check for outages with JEA here.

TDOT’s SmartWay app is a great place to look for dangerous roads.

Find live radar, hour-by-hour forecasts and more in the WBBJ Weather app.