Winter weather brings accidents, cancellations

Icy roads kept first responders busy handling accidents Thursday across Southeast Missouri.

Authorities temporarily closed the northbound lanes of Interstate 55 on Thursday afternoon after a passenger vehicle collided with a tractor-trailer just south of mile marker 101.

The vehicle spun out, hit a guardrail and went back into the traffic lane, where a tractor-trailer hit it, said Darin Hickey, public information officer for the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

The driver, whose name was not immediately available, had to be extricated and was taken to a hospital with moderate, non-life-threatening injuries, Hickey said.

In Bollinger County, the Missouri State Highway Patrol cited ice as the cause of a single-vehicle crash that left a Marquand, Mo., woman with minor injuries Thursday afternoon.

Tiffany Dry, 28, was driving a 2001 Chevrolet Silverado west on Highway 34 when ice on the roadway caused her to slide, the highway patrol reported.

Dry drove off the right side of the road and hit an embankment, the patrol reported.

Sleet builds up on a car windshield early Thursday afternoon, Dec. 5, 2013, in Cape Girardeau. Bollinger, Butler, Cape Girardeau, Carter, Perry, Ripley, Scott, Stoddard and Wayne counties are under a winter storm warning through 6 p.m. Friday. (Laura Simon)

Road conditions went from bad to worse as afternoon progressed into evening.

By 4 p.m., the National Weather Service had received social media reports of an eighth of an inch of ice on trees, decks and vehicles in Egypt Mills, and the Jackson emergency manager reported two-tenths of an inch of ice on elevated surfaces, with moderate sleet falling.

An hour later, a half-inch of sleet was building on roadways in Marble Hill, Mo., and drivers on Highway 60 near Ellsinore in Carter County, Mo., faced ice-covered bridges, slick roads, freezing rain and sleet, the National Weather Service reported.

Across the Mississippi River in Illinois, trained spotters reported freezing rain accumulating on top of a three-quarter-inch layer of sleet in Carbondale around 5 p.m., and by 8:45 p.m., much of Southern Illinois was covered in two to three inches of snow.

An Alexander County, Ill., emergency manager reported two-tenths of an inch of ice in Cairo, Ill., while the northern part of the county had a similar buildup, plus an inch of sleet on top.

By 6:30 p.m., the Missouri Department of Transportation's online traveler information map showed most major arteries south of St. Louis were partially or completely covered with ice, and westbound Interstate 44 closed for several hours Thursday evening in Phelps County, Mo., as a result of a traffic crash.

According to the map, roads remained clear in the Bootheel all evening, but the storm seemed to be moving east along the U.S. 60 corridor, with that highway partially covered with ice all the way across Stoddard County by 9:30 p.m.

Ameren Missouri's online power outage map showed no disruptions in Southeast Missouri on Thursday evening, but the company was preparing for the worst, deploying about 500 workers to the region and moving its mobile command center to Hayti, Mo., in anticipation of possible weather-related outages.

Cpl. Clark Parrott of the Missouri State Highway Patrol did not know how many crashes the weather had caused by Thursday evening, but he said troopers in Cape Girardeau and northern Madison County had been handling accidents since about 1 p.m.

"They've just been working traffic crashes and slideoffs," Parrott said.

In the interest of safety, many schools and government offices closed early Thursday, with some announcing plans to remain closed today, and several organizations canceled or rescheduled weekend events.

That strategy appeared to work in Jackson, where a dispatcher working Thursday evening said all the traffic problems seemed to be on I-55, not in town.

In Scott County, most roads were just beginning to get slick at 9 p.m., authorities said.

Perry County saw heavier precipitation -- and more accidents -- and in Cape Girardeau, officers spent most of the early evening responding to crash reports, although the number seemed to decrease as the evening wore on and road conditions continued to decline.

Meteorologists expect the weather to get worse before it gets better.

A winter storm warning remains in effect until 6 p.m. today, and National Weather Service forecasters were calling for up to 3 inches of sleet and snow Thursday night and three to five inches of new sleet and snow today.

The region could see more snow, sleet and freezing rain Sunday, with temperatures remaining below freezing through Thursday.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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