CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — If you see that roads are temporarily striped, a vehicle wasn’t accidentally spilling something or accidentally dragging something on the road.

The roads have been pretreated against snow or other winter weather. Because roads can be pretreated with the brine up to 48 hours before snow hits, the stripes can sometimes show up before drivers are even thinking about snow.

Brine helps melt the snow faster to make it safer for the public to drive. It comes in a premixed solution and is dispersed out of tanks in the back of the trucks. The West Virginia Division of Highways District 4, which covers Monongalia, Preston, Taylor, Harrison, Doddridge and Marion counties, has 28 storage containers that each hold more than 6,000 gallons of brine. 

Brine can be used in temperatures as low as 20°F, and when it’s colder than that, DOH crews will use wet salt.