By Lacie Morrison
lmorrison@mineralwellsindex.com

While snow meant snowballs and sculptures for area children Wednesday, it meant a lot of headaches and slow driving for motorists.

Across the county, students were released early from class as a winter snowstorm left accumulating three-to-four inches of wintry precipitation on area roadways.

Palo Pinto Independent School District and Gordon ISD started sending their students home at noon. Mineral Wells ISD, Garner ISD and Millsap ISD released at 1 p.m. while Santo ISD opted to wait until 1:30 p.m. to send students home for the day.

In Strawn ISD, superintendent David Lindsey said they were in class until their regular release time at 3:15 p.m.

“It stopped snowing at around 2 p.m. and the streets down here improved,” Lindsey said, better than they were at noon. “It’s melting down here a little bit. Some parents that live outside Strawn came and picked up their kids and that was fine. We had more snow than we anticipated.”

Most districts didn’t make a decision Thursday regarding Friday’s starting times. Lindsey said they would make a decision Friday morning.

“It depends on how cold it gets,” he explained.

Law enforcement and wrecker services were kept active Thursday afternoon responding to calls from cars to big rigs who’d slid either off the road or across it.

Mineral Wells ISD had a school bus slide off the roadway but MWISD Assistant Superintendent Linda Porter-Bradford said there were no injuries. According to the district’s transportation department, there were only two students on the bus at the time. Dispatchers also paged assistance at 3:15 p.m. for an 18-wheeler that jack-knifed on State Highway 337.

A Mineral Wells Police Department dispatcher reported numerous vehicles sliding off roads but no major collisions from the weather. At the Palo Pinto Sheriff’s Department, the dispatchers described a similar scenario.

According to the sheriff’s dispatch department, “people were just sliding off the road” on State Highway 16 and U.S. Highway 281 south of Interstate 20 was “pretty bad.”

“It started around noon,” said Tommy Heddins, the service manager for Cross Tire and Automotive Service. With two wrecker trucks, he said they had towed seven vehicles out of ditches by mid-afternoon on Thursday.

J&S; Salvage and Repair owner Scott O’Shield remarked, “People are just sliding around. … We just pull them out of the ditch.”

Between his three wrecker trucks, he said they’ve pulled eight vehicles back on to the road.

Both Heddins and O’Shield said they anticipate receiving calls for service throughout the night.

O’Shield advised drivers, “Just take it slow.”

Mineral Wells Public Works Director Bobby Baker said they had their two sanding trucks out Thursday afternoon working on the main roads.

With the forecast of more precipitation in sight, Baker said, “I anticipate it’s going to be an all-night deal.”

According to the National Weather Service, more snow was predicted for Thursday night with an additional 1 inch of accumulation. Today, NWS forecasted a slight chance for snow flurries before noon with a high near 46 degrees Fahrenheit.



Across Texas

The winter storm moved from the Panhandle and dumped up to 9 inches of snow on North Texas, creating slick roads that sent some school buses into ditches and hundreds of cars off the roads.

In Cooke County south of Gainesville, where most of the snow fell, several buses from the Callisburg school district slid into ditches as students from all grades were being taken home early because of the bad weather, Cooke County Emergency Management Coordinator Ray Fletcher said.

But the children walked out through the main doors except in one case, where the bus slid onto its side and they had to get out through the back door, he said. No injuries were reported.

“They let school out early because nobody counted on it getting bad this quick,” Fletcher said. “There were no injuries, just real hassles in getting the buses out of the ditches.”

Besides the 9 inches near Gainesville, other significant amounts also were north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area: 7 inches in Denton and about 8 in Sherman, according to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth.

After being pounded by sleet and drizzling rain for several hours, the Dallas-Fort Worth area was expected to get up 5 inches of snow by Friday morning, according to weather forecasters.

“Right now our big concern is rush hour,” Arlington police Lt. Blake Miller said Thursday afternoon. “But people seem to be slowing down, and it appears people have taken the opportunity to go home early.”

Many businesses, government buildings and schools throughout the region closed early and called off events. Still, minor car accidents and traffic jams were reported in several cities.

The Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport canceled 200 departing flights — about a fifth of its scheduled departures — and expected to cancel more as the weather continued to worsen and temperatures dropped below freezing, officials said.

Heather Hays, an anchor for Dallas-Fort Worth television station KDFW, told her colleagues by phone on the air Thursday that she, her husband and baby had been on a Hawaii-bound plane on the tarmac for three hours and that the aircraft had just been approved to be de-iced. She said the pilot told passengers, “It's just been one of those days.”

Dallas-Fort Worth television station WFAA showed news footage of some passengers exiting an American Eagle plane and walking toward the terminal.

Airport spokesman David Magana said about 70 planes had been on the tarmac Thursday afternoon, but some were about to depart and others had taken passengers back to the terminal where many were expected to stay overnight.

“It's going to be a long night,” Magana said.

Texas Department of Transportation workers used de-icing materials on some roads earlier in the afternoon, and crews across North Texas planned to apply sand to roads after temperatures were below freezing, officials in several cities said.

The Houston area faced a different weather quandary, as forecasters predicted thunderstorms that could produce up to 5 inches of rain, hail and strong winds in Southeast Texas. A tornado watch for more than two dozen counties ended Thursday night.

The cold front with light rain and snow flurries was expected to move into parts of that area Friday.

“This type of storm system is very typical of the end of winter and early spring, and the same storm may cause different impacts on different places,” said Ron McQueen, an NWS meteorologist in Lubbock.

The upper-level storm system started early Thursday in the Panhandle, where from 1 inch to 4.5 inches of snow fell, according to the NWS office in Amarillo. But it stopped my midday and had melted as temperatures were in the 40s. Lubbock got a dusting although light snow fell throughout the day Thursday, McQueen said.

Temperatures were expected to warm up in the Panhandle on Friday and over the weekend. In North Texas, snow flurries and temperatures in the 40s were predicted for Friday, with warmer and sunny weather for the weekend.

Texans may be ready for spring, but wintry weather in March and even later certainly isn't unusual in the state.

Last Easter weekend — in early April — a freeze caused serious losses for crops of pecans, peaches, watermelons, cantaloupe and pumpkins in Texas. It also damaged about three-fourths of the grape crop in the fifth-largest wine-producing state.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.