SNOW: STORM HITS AREA; MORE IS FORECAST

At least 2 inches of snow blanketed parts of Southeast Missouri late Monday and early Tuesday, forcing cancellation of schools and causing problems for motorists.

Cape Girardeau police reported at least 20 minor accidents in the city, mostly involving vehicles running off roads or sliding into street signs. No injuries were reported.

More snow is forecast for this afternoon, said the National Weather Service. Minor accumulation is expected. Snowfall is expected to cease by midnight and temperatures are expected to be in the low- to mid-30s.

Schools in Cape Girardeau, Patton and Perryville were closed Tuesday, but schools in Jackson, Scott City and Chaffee remained open. No school cancellations were expected for today.

Cape Girardeau Superintendent Neyland Clark said the district will not "make up" Monday's snow day. He said extra days are included in the school's calendar to allow for days canceled because of bad weather.

"At this point in time we will not be making the day up," Clark said. "There have been rumors that we will hold classes on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but that day will be recognized."

Clark said though it is unusual that school would be called off in Cape Girardeau and not in Jackson where buses travel more rural miles than any other Missouri school district he and other administrators will take a "better-safe-than-sorry" approach to calling snow days this year.

"At 5:30 this morning we thought it was too hazardous to bring the busses in," Clark said. "The snow didn't bother us as much as the ice did."

The superintendent said, "When the people I converse with early in the morning give me information that the roads are hazardous, you will find Cape public schools closing."

Fred Jones, Jackson assistant superintendent, said there were no major problems Tuesday morning involving children being transported to school. But more students than normal were absent Tuesday, he said.

"We had between 10 and 15 percent of our kids miss school today, but some came back in the afternoon and missed only the morning hours," Jones said. On a normal day, 3 to 4 percent of students are absent, he said.

Some busses were late getting to school, he said, but none experienced any major problems on the roads.

Jones said the decision to hold school was made at around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. "Our superintendent and our transportation director were both on the roads this morning. They went out separately and each traveled about 150 miles," he said. "At the time they were out, they felt it was possible to have school."

Scott City Superintendent Bob Brison said though attendance was down slightly Tuesday the snow caused few problems.

"We got a good school day in," Brison said Tuesday, adding that the decision to have school was made at about 4:30 a.m.

"Most of our (bus) routes are in town," the superintendent said, "and the buses on the roads this morning seemed to have few problems."

The snow was blamed for power outages in Cape Girardeau. Lightning accompanied the snow, and some areas of town were left without power for several hours beginning late Monday night.

Outages were reported in south Cape Girardeau and in the west end of the city near Arena Park. Several primary wires in those areas were down, said A.D. Cox, superintendent of operations for Union Electric.

Cox said about 1,200 customers were affected by outages. Damage to power lines was apparently caused by the snow and not the lightening, he said.

"We had some primary wires down, mostly due to the weight of the snow on the wires," said Cox. "And during all these weather problems, we had an underground cable fail in the Westfield area. That caused even more problems."

Cox said power in all sections of town was restored by 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

City street crews in Cape Girardeau had few problems clearing the snow Monday night and Tuesday morning from the city's primary streets, said Kevin McMeel, assistant public works director.

"It went pretty well," he said. "We had some equipment problems, but all in all we had a pretty good night."

McMeel said crews were dispatched in four dump trucks equipped with snow blades and a similarly equipped pickup truck just prior to midnight.

"Most of the night we were just pushing the snow and slush off the streets," he said. "We started putting salt down when it started to freeze a little bit around 4 a.m.

McMeel said crews spent most of Tuesday trying to clear secondary streets and salt icy or potentially icy streets.

He said the mechanical problems consisted of breakdowns with the salt spreaders on the trucks. Also, some of the large snow blades broke and had to be replaced. McMeel said the hour of the storm helped the street crews.

"There was pretty light traffic out there," he said. "Even in the morning, there didn't seem to be as many people out on the streets."

McMeel said Tuesday's sunny skies helped to melt what snow remained on streets. "We're working to try to get the inlets uncovered and let the water drain so we don't have a problem with the streets freezing later," he added.

With the possibility of more snow forecast for today, McMeel said street crews were hard at work preparing the equipment for the next storm whenever it comes.

He said he was surprised that the storm didn't dump more snow on the area. "Because of the lightning and thunder we were having, we thought it was going to last a lot longer than it did," he said.

(Some information for this story was provided by staff writer Jay Eastlick.)