Snow!
Motorists go slip-sliding away

BY JOHN PATTERSON
AND WESLEY YOUNG
SALISBURY POST

The snow wasn’t deep, but it sure made some roads slippery for people trying to get into work this morning.

Parts of Rowan County got 1 1/2 inches of snow, and other parts got a light dusting, as a winter storm plowed through during the morning hours.

By mid-morning, the sun was coming out and skies were clearing.

‘‘It has been slick,’’ said meteorologist Bryan McAvoy from the National Weather Service office in Greenville, S.C. ‘‘It is cold ... (there’s) a thin sheet of snow on the ground, cars roll over that, and you get a sheet of ice.’’

Frank Thomason, director of Rowan County Telecommunications, said there were 35 wrecks reported between 5:15 and 11 this morning, including 15 alone between 6 and 7 a.m.

‘‘All of the wrecks we’ve had have been weather-related,’’ Thomason said. ‘‘Five of the wrecks involved injuries and the rest were property damage only.’’

Rowan-Salisbury school officials called off classes for Wednesday, though classes ran on schedule in Kannapolis City Schools.

Rowan-Salisbury Assistant Superintendent Gene Miller said school officials were up at 4 this morning checking roads. ‘‘And it became very evident around 5:15 that we shouldn’t have school today.’’

Out of all the local areas, the West district was a ‘‘little worse’’ than the others, he said. Even as the snow and ice melted away as the sun came out, Miller doesn’t regret the decision to call school off.

‘‘Between 5:30 and 7 a.m. this morning, it would not have been safe for our buses to be on the roads nor our students,’’ Miller said.

Even the meteorologists were talking among themselves about how the snow seemed to make road conditions a little slicker than normal, McAvoy said. They decided that because it is a little colder than usual, there was no melting when the snow hit the pavement, allowing the pressure of car tires to press the flakes into a dangerous sheet of ice.

‘‘Every few years we get 3-4-5 inches,’’ McAvoy said. ‘‘Usually the roads are not too bad because we get enough snow, or the temperature is high enough to prevent icing.’’

While Salisbury Public Services Director Vernon Sherrill considered a dusting of snow last Friday a ‘‘non-event,’’ today’s snow proved to be something to deal with.

‘‘We’re still working some streets right now,’’ Sherrill said at 8:45 a.m., although the snow had stopped and the sun was peeking through the gray.

Sherrill’s department had a crew and equipment ready to go, starting with Tuesday afternoon’s snow shower. But in Salisbury, the snow waited until about 4:30 this morning before it really became something to address.

Twenty minutes later, city crews were dusting main thoroughfares and emergency routes with a salt-sand mix. Later, the trucks turned their attention to hills that were proving tough to negotiate and city parking lots.

Sherrill estimated that 1 to 1.5 inches fell on Salisbury. The morning’s snow, fluffy enough to be swept off sidewalks with brooms or blown off driveways with leaf blowers, created some slick situations.

‘‘This kind of stuff responds pretty well to salt and sand,’’ Sherrill said. ‘‘It’s not like ice, even though it was slippery.’’

The small accumulation was never enough to consider pushing with plows.

Though Rowan-Salisbury called off classes, city offices just delayed opening until 10 a.m. Sherrill also delayed city buses and garbage collection trucks until the roads were safer.

Geraldine Chatham came in from Taylorsville this morning to her job as officer in charge of the Woodleaf Post Office.

‘‘I saw some slide around in the road,’’ she said. ‘‘I was being extremely careful. I do not like to have wrecks. It didn’t seem to be as much ice as we usually get, and it was slippery.’’

But in Gold Hill, Postmaster Evelyn Smith said only patches of snow lay here and there. Smith drove in from Concord and found the snow got heavier and started to accumulate on roads as she got closer to work. But roads were clear and snow was only in patches in the woods by mid morning, she said.

Don Steele, driving into Rowan County from Statesville about 6:30 a.m., found roads ‘‘passable but slick’’ as he drove through the Amity Hill area.

Residents in the south Rowan area were dealing with much the same conditions as people in the Salisbury area.

Kannapolis Police said they’ve ‘‘responded to more accidents than usual this morning.’’ By about 9:30 a.m., police had responded to six or seven accidents, according to Lt. Terry Kiser. None was serious.

In China Grove, Police Chief Michael Bentley said the town hasn’t suffered any weather related problems.

‘‘There’s nothing on the road but a little slush, and it’s almost gone,’’ Bentley said. ‘‘We’re fine.’’

McAvoy said Rowan County and other parts of the central North Carolina Piedmont may still see another dusting late tonight or tomorrow morning. But the clouds won’t drop enough to amount to anything.

The storm dropped an atypical inch to an inch and a half of snow on parts of central South Carolina, McAvoy noted. The Associated Press reported heavier accumulations north of the Triad and in the northwestern mountains.

Four inches fell in Mitchell County and at Sam’s Gap in Madison County, reports showed. Weather observers in Yancey and Madison counties reported 2 inches on the ground.

Up to an inch fell in the Triad, and the weather service received reports of more than 2 inches north of the Triad near the Virginia border, the AP reported.

Greensboro officials said a Colfax man died after his car skidded across a bridge and collided with another vehicle, the AP said.

While the snow caused headaches for motorists, there were no reports of major power outages.

Despite the cold snap and the snow, February is still running way above normal for temperature, the National Weather Service said. Statistics for Charlotte show that so far, the average temperature for February has been 47.3 degrees, or 5.5 degrees above normal. January’s average temperature was 45.7 degrees, or 6.4 degrees above normal.

And after this storm?

‘‘Well, guess what? Springtime returns,’’ McAvoy said. ‘‘All the cold air will get locked up in Canada again.’’

Staff writers Susan Dickerson, Sara Pitzer, Mark Wineka and Matthew Winter contributed to this article.