Yorktown To Drivers: Please Stay Off The Roads

YORKTOWN, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Northern Westchester could see upwards of a half of inch of ice. Road crews have been out for hours struggling to stay ahead of the storm.

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Yorktown Highway Superintendent Eric DiBartolo spoke with CBS 2HD Wednesday morning about the response.

SEE: Ice Storm Photos

"It's real treacherous at this point. We have sleet coming down, and some freezing rain mixed in. Roads are in really bad shape. The crews are out. We're doing the best we can, but we're just trying to play catch-up," he said.

Asked how frequently the crews were making passes on the roads to lay salt, DiBartolo answered "At this point we're running with 78 trucks. Everybody's out there. We're continuously scraping. Right now we run through a road, and within three, four, five minutes we got covered back over again."

"Our ground temperature up here in Yorktown is 18 degrees, so no matter what's coming down at this point, it's freezing on contact. As soon as it hits, it's freezing," he said.

The midweek storm was different from the other seven major storms of the season, featuring more ice than snow. That change was not a welcome one in Westchester.

"I will tell you, this is one of the worst at this point. I tell everybody I'd rather take three feet of snow than a half inch of ice. It looks like, unfortunately, we're going to have that ice. We have it building up now," he said.

"It's real tough because the people don't realize, when we scrape the roads, they see that the roads look half decent, so people get out there, they want to try to get out, to make a move to go to work or wherever, and we're asking the people - it's an absolute dire emergency - please stay off the road.  Give us time to do what we have to do. The roads are very treacherous at this point."