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Most roads in Mecklenburg, Anson, Cabarrus, Stanly and Union counties are “partially or completely covered in ice,” North Carolina Department of Transportation officials said Sunday.
“The good news is, we see temperatures starting to climb throughout the day today and even into the night,” said NCDOT Division 10 Maintenance Engineer Mike Mariano. “Tomorrow, we will start to see temperatures above freezing before it drops to the single digits Monday night. We will continue to make strides to re-establish our roads in our bare pavement system through the day and into the night.”
Charlotte is one of dozens of major cities affected by a winter storm making its way across the eastern half of the U.S. Weather forecasters expect up to an inch of sleet and around a half-inch of ice in the Charlotte area, with hazardous conditions lasting through Monday afternoon.
NCDOT’s live travel map at drivenc.gov showed no major incidents around midday Sunday, but winter precipitation is expected to continue falling throughout the day.
In the days leading up to the freeze, the department pretreated roads across the five-county division with approximately 183,250 gallons of brine, a mixture of salt and water. Saturday afternoon, crews began working in 12-hour shifts to apply more salt to roads to speed up melting.
NCDOT will deploy 195 trucks to “monitor and treat all bare pavement routes” until the storm passes and roads are clear, department officials said Sunday morning.
Officials warned residents to avoid travel, if possible, as hazardous conditions could persist “for several days.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2026 at 12:46 PM.
Rebecca Noel reports on education for The Charlotte Observer. She’s a native of Houston, Texas, and graduated from Rice University. She later received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. When she’s not reporting, she enjoys reading, running and frequenting coffee shops around Charlotte.
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Rebecca Noel
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