Treacherous road conditions close major stretch of Alaska Highway

It's been an odd few days of weather in the Yukon. In Carmacks, the temperature hit 6.1 degrees on Tuesday. That's a new record. It's been warm in Whitehorse, too. Those fluctuating temperatures mixed with freezing rain and snow have turned road conditions into this. As a safety measure, a southern portion of the Alaska Highway was closed today. Travel advisories were also issued for the Atlin and Tagish Roads, as well as the South Klondike and Robert Campbell Highways. Scott Boone thinks it's a good idea. He makes a living teaching people how to drive. It's all about conditions. And if we have to mandate people stop driving so that they're safe, then so be it. What happens to the roads on a day like today? What do you notice? So a big thing with this time of year, and we get very similar conditions in the spring as well, when we got for the first one is our visibility, light. When we're getting around the lunchtime area and the sun is rising to the south, it's shining straight down the avenues making it it. Very blinding. If we have ice or snow on the road, that can reflect and have a lot of glare effect, so it's very difficult to see as well. Boone says that's why it's important to keep this in mind when getting behind the wheel. Our tires, having the proper tires on. We can't be driving in these conditions on summer tires. Boone says it's also important to take your time. We don't have that space to be zipping and zooming and we've got the ice so we need to anticipate we need to start slowing down a little bit more. Boone has been teaching people how to drive for over 15 years. It's been so slick lately that even just walking on the roads and trying to make your way to your vehicle has been difficult. He says you can often tell the roads are going to be slippery before you even get into your car. If we've got a lot of snow on the car, we know that there's going to be snow on the roads. Or the last couple of mornings there's been a lot of ice, so we've had to scrape ice. The driveway is slippery, the car is slippery, we've got that ice that we've got to clear off. We could probably take that information and anticipate that the roads are going to be exactly the same as well. On top of patience, anticipation, and quality winter tires, Boone recommends Yukoners have one of these. Even though, unlike other Canadian jurisdictions, it's not law to have your windshield scraped clear. The Department of Highways and Public Works was hoping to have the Alaska Highway opened this afternoon. They say crews will continue to sand troubled areas. George Moradis, CBC News, Whitehorse.