DANVILLE, Va. – For the second time in less than a week, Danville is bracing for a winter storm. But this time, the city could see a wintry mix of snow, sleet and freezing starting late Saturday night and extending through the morning hours on Sunday.

Blacksburg meteorologist Reggie Roakes said a low-pressure system moving across the Ohio Valley will ride over the area and bring a wintry mix.

“The precipitation is temperature dependent,” Roakes said. “You are going to receive impactful precipitation no matter what.”

The precipitation will begin as snow and then transition to sleet and freezing rain and later to rain as temperatures warm. Accumulations will depend on how quickly the transition takes place, with snow accumulations ranging from one to two inches and ice accumulations ranging from a tenth of an inch to a quarter of an inch.

Public Works crews are pretreating major thoroughfares, bridges, and overpasses with brine, which is a mixture of water and salt. The water in the brine evaporates, leaving the salt behind on the road. The salt breaks the bond between the snow and sleet and the roadway, and it, therefore, helps prevent the precipitation from freezing onto roads and bridges.

Residential streets are not pretreated.

Crews are prepared for round-the-clock snow removal operations. They will begin plowing road surfaces when one inch of snow has accumulated. Plowing continues only on the highest traffic volume roads until the end of the snow event.

When the snow event has ended, and the main thoroughfares are cleared, crews then will move to collector streets, which connect the main thoroughfares to neighborhoods. The final stage will be residential streets.