The streets ran red near Lowell, Mass.

Whoa, they built a highway through a cranberry bog? Uh, no. Lowell Massachusetts is in the north central part of the state, miles removed from the bogs of the Cape. The orange hue that coated route 495's northbound lane did make for a colorful nighttime drive, however messy it ended up being. A tractor trailer carrying dye intended for mulch deposited some of its cargo on the highway after the load shifted.

The dye, colored with iron oxide, is generally considered harmless, and a local car wash ended up doing a booming business cleaning the orange schmutz from afflicted cars. The only danger from the spill seemed to be some obscuring of lane markings over the heaviest stretch of the roughly three miles the spill eventually occupied. Not that lane markings mean much to drivers here in Massachusetts, anyway, so that's a non-hazard. Nobody has been cited in the incident, which seems to have been mainly harmless. Some cars got messy, 495 now has a splash of color, and nobody got hurt. There is an insurance hotline to call for drivers affected, though we wonder how many car washes they're willing to pay for. Any residual dye will be gone after Thursday's forecast snow, we're sure.


[Source: Lowell Sun via Carscoop]