Slippery situation: Slick conditions from area's first real snowstorm of season cause dozens of accidents

By late Monday night, meteorologists were still watching the weather, waiting to see what a second band of storms held in store for the Bootheel.

Jayson Wilson, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Paducah, Ky., said one prediction was nearly certain.

"Southeast Missouri is getting hit with one to three inches of snow and sleet," he said. "It's part of a massive arctic system -- the same one that caused problems in Montana."

Southeast Missouri's first real snowstorm this season caused dozens of traffic accidents. The weather led to the early dismissal of classes as well as a smattering of evening cancellations.

With temperatures hovering around 19 degrees and streets slick, Wilson cautioned against driving "unless absolutely necessary" until the worst of the storm had passed. The storm warning issued Monday is supposed to expire at noon today but could be extended, Wilson said. Missouri counties affected are Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Perry and Scott.

ELIZABETH DODD ~ edodd@semissourian.comKids cross an icy Clark Street on Monday afternoon. The weather caused many accidents and traffic back ups.

By 8:30 p.m. Monday, 183 of AmerenUE's more than 16,000 customers in Cape Girardeau County and northern Scott County were without power. No outages appeared in Alexander and Union counties in Illinois.

The most intense snowfall started around 2 p.m. Within 15 minutes, dozens of calls for help were placed to area police departments. In less than three hours, Cape Girardeau police spokesman Sgt. Barry Hovis said, at least 18 traffic accidents were reported, including two separate incidents in which police cars were damaged. Police officers were not injured in either case, he said.

By 3:30 p.m. a spate of accidents had been reported on U.S. 60 in the southern part of Scott County, which seemed to be the area hit hardest by freezing rain, according to emergency operations manager Joel Evans.

Police radio traffic indicated several accidents, traffic backups and stalled cars, including along Bloomfield Road, Broadway, William Street, Mount Auburn Road and Kingshighway.

At 3:15 p.m., patrolman Freddie Hill of the Cape Girardeau Police Department said he alone fielded 15 calls since 2 p.m.

"So many cars are getting stuck on the roadway that it's too numerous to run down an exact list," Hill said. "It's been pretty bad today."

Most city and county crews spent Monday preparing to attack icy main roadways, secondary roads, elevated surfaces, bridges and overpasses.

In Jackson, public works director Rodney Bollinger said roads with the highest volume of traffic, such as Main Street, will be cleared first and receive continuous treatment throughout a storm. Collector streets -- roads that provide for traffic movement between arterial and local roadways and provide direct access to abutting property -- are given second priority. The final roads cleared are local routes, which are streets that provide access to adjacent property, including cul-de-sacs and other dead-end roads.

Jackson's street department uses a crew of eight workers, six plow trucks, four cinder trucks, a wheel loader with a 12-foot plow and a motor grader during the process. Bollinger estimates it takes 18 hours for the entire process to clear all of the city's 100 miles of streets with plows and cinders.

Robert Kutak, Cape Girardeau's new traffic operations manager, said his crews arrived at 6 a.m. Monday to switch leaf collection equipment off trucks and install salt spreaders and snow plows.

He said city workers pretreated the streets early in the day and he had "12 trucks and 12 drivers" salting roads Monday evening. At 9:45 p.m., he decided to call in a new crew, to work from midnight to dawn.

"The No. 1 priority is clearing main thoroughfares, and they'll stay priority one until they're down to water," he said. "Then we move to secondary roads, then side streets. After those are completed, we'll move to priority three, which are the dead ends or cul-de-sacs."

Kutak said he would remain at work to monitor the weather and make decisions until the situation calmed. He said he expected to be on the job for most of the night.

"I came from Chicago, so I know about snow," he said.

Cape Girardeau County Highway Department administrator Scott Bechtold said he did not keep a prioritized list for clearing the roads. He said equipment, such as graders, would be put to work on the closest roads to where they were parked or stored. He said he did not have a plan in response to today's weather forecast other than going "wherever we need to be."

Norman Brant, Scott County's highway administrator, said he'd assigned trucks to spread sand through Monday afternoon.

"We're getting the hill roads first," he said. "Then we're going to come in early [this] morning and see what happens with the weather then ... we just don't know if the weather is going to get worse or it may not do any more than what it's doing. You're never for sure in Missouri."

Bruce Loy, Cape Girardeau Regional airport manager, said flights were proceeding as scheduled because "braking action is OK, but we're going to closely watch it."

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

bblackwell@semissourian.com

388-3628

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Winter weather hits Cape

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