The Government Delegate in Extremadura, José Luis Quintana Álvarez, chaired this morning the coordination meeting of the Winter Road Plan 2025-2026 in which the resources of this plan have been reviewed, whose objective is to prepare the device to act on the roads of the Autonomous Community in the face of any adverse meteorological phenomenon.

Quintana explained at the meeting, which was held in person, that the region is prevented and prepared for possible climatic adversities; that the necessary means and resources are available to act and that the coordination mechanisms between all the administrations involved have been strengthened.

In this annual meeting of the Winter Road Plan 2025-2026 for extreme weather on the roads of the State of the region, representatives of the Government Delegation and of State administration agencies such as the Provincial Traffic Headquarters, State Meteorology Agency in Extremadura, Road Demarcation, Traffic Sector of Civil Guard, Military Emergency Unit, National Police, Civil Guard, as well as the Junta de Extremadura, of the two provincial deputies, Fempex and Red Cross, participated.

The Government Delegate explained that the fundamental objective of the meeting is to enhance “the coordination of all the agencies and departments involved to intensify the effectiveness of the actions in situations of snowfall, ice, hail or heavy rains in order to avoid or reduce the number of sections with traffic restrictions or retentions, as well as to ensure the attention of the occupants of the vehicles when the situation demands it.”

In this way, action measures have been taken to prevent the formation of ice sheets on the roads when frosts are expected; to inform road users of any incident sufficiently in advance and, in case of snowfall, to remove the snow to minimize traffic disturbances.

Available resources

This year, this Winter Road Plan has 32 complete equipment of machinery, distributed in 14 units for the province of Badajoz and 18 for the province of Cáceres. To this number we must add 30 vehicles of auxiliary machinery, in particular, 7 off-road vehicles, 14 trucks with boom and 9 mixed machines.

In addition, 1,575 tons of salt are stored distributed in six silos and thirteen ships. Of these, 476 tons are for the province of Badajoz and 1,099 for the province of Cáceres. There is also 2,380 kg of calcium chloride (all in the province of Cáceres) that is used in extreme situations of very low temperatures.

In this sense, the Delegate pointed out that “in the province of Cáceres there are more storage points because having more altitude there are more possibilities of snowfall”.

There are also 14 brine plants (7 in the province of Badajoz and 7 in the province of Cáceres) with a total tank capacity of 368,000 liters (160,000 in Badajoz and 208,000 in Cáceres). The brine is water with a salt concentration greater than 5% dissolved.

Campaign 2024-2025

As a data, it should be noted that in the last season a total of 791.67 tons of salt were consumed throughout the region. In addition, 11 curative operations were carried out in the province of Cáceres and 244 preventive operations, 208 in the province of Cáceres and 36 in the province of Badajoz.

AEMET

For its part, the AEMET of Extremadura has more than 160 meteorological stations, 53 send data every hour to monitor and observe the weather in different points of the region. This year, according to the seasonal forecast for winter 2025-2026, rainfall is most likely to be lower than the average values and warmer average temperatures of the reference values.

The Government Delegate thanked all the competent agencies for their teamwork in this task, including the State Administration, the Autonomous Region, the City Councils and the Security Forces, “to promote, with appropriate measures, the transit of vehicles and the safety of passengers.” Finally, Quintana appealed to the caution and prudence of drivers when driving in adverse weather situations and urged them to follow the instructions of emergency services at all times to avoid risk situations.