Black ice leads to disastrous morning commute

Slick roads made for a chaotic, dangerous commute this morning.

Spin-outs and slide-offs were everywhere, leading to huge backups.

Some drivers reported that it took them hours to get to work, and it only got slightly better throughout the rest of the day.

From their facility in Roseville, MnDOT workers watch for crashes, spin-outs, and slide-offs so they can send help where it's needed, but also let motorists know where the trouble spots are.

This morning, there were a lot of them -- 152 crashes and 73 spin-outs were reported between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m.

Those incidents resulted in 22 injuries. Thankfully, none of them were serious.

Slide-outs continued throughout the day. The problem from dawn to dust has been black ice formed atop a thin layer of snow with the help of exhaust from slow-moving vehicles.

MnDOT's Kent Barnard says, "We are putting down some salt in some slippery spot areas but unfortunately as we get to below zero the salt really slows down [the] ice melting capabilities."

"We are using some magnesium chloride which does melt ice at lower temperatures," he adds.

But nothing is 100 percent effective, and Barnard says he's hoping everybody will drive a little bit slower tomorrow.