Spreaddie Mercury is out and about
Our hot-weather gritter has finally been out in the hot weather and will be doing more runs today.
Our dedicated gritter, Spreaddie Mercury, has been out in action for reactive sand dusting on Lincolnshire’s roads for the first time.
The machine has been out in Louth at the Halfpenny Lane / Horncastle Road junction to sand the road there. The road at this point has seen some damage because of the recent high temperatures and volume of traffic at the junction.
Sanding like this will help the section of road later in the day as temperatures rise again. Spreaddie will return to the depot and remain on-call throughout the day to go and continue dusting sand if needed on the county’s roads network.
At 3.33pm Monday afternoon (yesterday) we have had a peak road surface temperature of 56.3C. Martin, Timberland has the crown for the hottest road temperatures in the county so far. This temperature is expected to be exceeded today.
‘Spreaddie Mercury’ is on call 24 hours a day to put sand on the roads in case of oil/fuel spills. In extreme temperatures the smallest gritter in the fleet is used to dust on to melting bitumen which can turn from solid to liquid in temperatures in excess of 50C.
Spreaddie is going to be retired at the end of the year after 10 years of service with LCC. Up until today (July 19) there has never been a call-out for the gritter because of high temperatures affecting the roads network.
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