SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Thanksgiving is winding down, which means Utah is about to enter the coldest months of the year.
With winter weather comes inclement weather, which can make traveling tricky.
Northern Utah got a little taste of winter weather this week, and even though it didn’t last long it affected travel.
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The Utah Department of Transportation has been working on the roads so that when more rain and snow does come, people can stay safe.
Tuesday’s storm made traveling a little more difficult than usual in some spots. I-15 saw plenty of moisture, and Bountiful got a decent amount of snow.
But that was just a small taste of some of what happened in the winter of 2022-2023.
“That [season] wreaked a lot of havoc on our roads. In particular, the striping. And we heard from a lot of people saying, ‘Hey, I can’t see the striping on the roads,’” Mitch Shaw with UDOT told KUTV in October.
Before one of the first storms of this season, Shaw talked about some of UDOT’s recent projects.
He said after the winter of 2022-2023, the legislature allocated six million dollars a year to UDOT just for lane striping.
This has allowed UDOT to start and finish some of those projects this year.
“We totally replaced the striping on I-15 from Brigham City through Ogden,” Shaw said.
They also did it on Sardine Canyon and have been working on doing it on highways in Salt Lake, Tooele, Summit, and Davis counties.
The type of striping they are doing is called “tiger tail.”
“Instead of just a paint, it’s like a tape that’s actually embedded into the road,” Shaw said. “And then it’s got the traditional white marking that people are used to seeing and then it’s outlined with black. So, the contrast kind of helps people see it better.”
There’s no telling the kind of weather Utah will get this winter season, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. That means going slow, paying attention, and keeping your vehicle maintenance up to date.
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