A Meat Cove, N.S., resident is hoping a widely shared photo he took on Monday of an ice-glazed road will lead to better maintenance of it.

Jerome MacKrous said he, his brother and his friend were driving out of the area Monday morning to attend a course. However, when they got to a small hill coated in ice, they had to turn around — but not before taking a photo.

"We actually thought it was a nice picture so we decided to take a picture of the conditions of the road," said MacKrous.

"We got frustrated and were like, this is kind of ridiculous at 8:30 in the morning. The roads were absolutely ice. The majority of the road from Meat Cove right to Capstick, about 70 per cent of the road was majority all ice."

Meat Cove is about eight kilometres from Capstick.

Widely shared photo

The photo was picked up by the Port Hawkesbury radio station, The Hawk, where it has been shared more than 3,600 times on Facebook.

"It's definitely bringing attention to the problem that the road conditions are never really upkept. Hopefully it brings a positive thing out of this," said MacKrous.

MacKrous said icy roads like the one in the picture are a fairly common sight in Meat Cove during the winter. It's something he said causes problems for people who live there.

"There's a number of people in the community that depend on home care, there are nurses that have to come into various homes three to four times a week and there's children in this community that go to school as well. It just, it causes problems, more than one problem for everybody."

Nova Scotia's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal added sand to the stretch of road later in the morning.

'Extreme freezing rain'

Stephen MacDonald, the area manager for the transportation department in Victoria and Inverness counties, said severe weather led to the icy road.

On Sunday into Monday, the area experienced "four or five hours of fairly extreme freezing rain conditions," he said.

Nova Scotia's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal added sand to the stretch of road later in the morning. (Submitted by Jerome MacKrous)

MacDonald said crews were on the road addressing the ice buildup at 8 a.m., which is within the 24-hour time frame crews have to respond to weather events.

'Rare condition'

"Early morning Monday after the freezing rain had ended, we then focused on our local gravel roads and at that point we dispatched our sanding trucks … and the Meat Cove Road was actually the first road sanded in that area," said MacDonald.

MacDonald said the Meat Cove Road is challenging because it's hilly and has plenty of twists and turns. He said of all the areas he services, that road is likely sanded the most.

"​It's a rare condition that we experienced the other morning. You might get one or two a year like that.… There may be times during either a heavy snowfall or ice conditions that residents unfortunately may have to wait for safe travel," he said.