ARLINGTON, Texas — The forecast is becoming more and more set on snow falling across North Texas on Thursday and Friday, just as the Cotton Bowl Classic gets ready to kick off at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
Board Chairman for the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association, Kelvin Walker, emphasized, “AT&T Stadium has been through this many times, so they’ll be prepared to make sure as fans arrive that getting to your parking spaces and all those things will be done in a way that will keep them all safe.”
City of Arlington Public Works crews began treating roads on Monday and started working on the entertainment district streets on Tuesday. They plan to get salt brine down one more time on Wednesday ahead of the Cotton Bowl.
DJ Ryals, Field Operations Supervisor with the City of Arlington explained, “Our salt brine goes on 24 to 48 hours in advance. That’s kind of our pretreatment and we will wait for any precipitation to fall. Then, we’ll use our sanding trucks.”
When it comes to their staffing this week, Ryals shared, “We will move to our 12-hour shifts starting at midnight Thursday morning. We’ll do midnight to noon, Thursday and Friday for the Cotton Bowl and if it lingers longer than that, we’ll go longer if we need to.”
Walker tells WFAA the Cotton Bowl is working intently, “To communicate to fans ahead of time if we see, precipitation or situations where we need them to be even more careful than they than the news is telling them to be and also just the preparation around the stadium.” He also wants to put fans at ease that, “It’s gonna be fine. Drive carefully as you would if there were no weather and come out to enjoy what we think is gonna be a historic experience.”
If you are headed to the Cotton Bowl Classic, it’s a good idea to follow the social media pages and keep an eye out for any updates or changes there.
“I’ve been watching the forecasts, I’ve been watching Pete Delkus tell me what’s going to happen,” Walker added. “I’m still optimistic that even if we have snow on Thursday that with our consultation with our team at AT&T and the staff — we’re gonna be fine.”