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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Slippery Going / Snow sparks slideoffs; more snow coming
SLIDESHOW: Winter driving conditions in the Top of Utah on Friday
OGDEN -- Friday's winter storm hit the Top of Utah hard, and meteorologists are saying more of the same can be expected for the weekend.
Chris Young, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, said that while the heaviest snow hit Friday, the snow and cold will be hanging over the Top of Utah all weekend.
There will be a 50 percent chance of snow today, with highs in the mid-20s, he said. The snowfall will be heavy again Sunday night into Monday morning.
Friday's storm left roads icy and the number of traffic accidents high, but with very few of those accidents causing severe injuries.
"There have been a lot of slideoffs and a few property-damage crashes," said Todd Johnson, Utah Highway Patrol public information officer.
The causes of the accidents have yet to be determined, but he said most of the wrecks probably were preventable.
"Most weather-related crashes can be prevented with a little caution," he said.
As of 4:30 p.m. Friday, UHP had calls about 79 slideoffs.
Police in Davis County said traffic was slowed because of the weather, but no major accidents occurred.
"We've had a lot more accidents than we usually do, but luckily, nothing of any severity," said Clearfield Assistant Police Chief Greg Krusi.
Ogden police call logs show 26 traffic accidents were called in during a 12-hour period beginning at 6 a.m. Friday, but none of those accidents were severe.
The Utah Department of Transportation had a hard time keeping snow off roads and keeping plows moving in heavy traffic Friday.
"There's so much snow and so little time," said Adan Carrillo, UDOT public information officer.
"Our plows are stuck in traffic just like everyone else. Everybody is at a standstill sometimes, and our plows are usually in that mess."
One of UDOT's priorities is to make sure the interstates, which have the most traffic, are plowed ahead of any secondary roads, Carrillo said.
Airlines were also delayed because of the snow.
As of 6 p.m. Friday, almost every airline at Salt Lake International Airport had delayed flights.
Southwest Airlines reported that 90 percent of its flights were delayed and estimated that operations were one to four hours behind schedule.
Delta reported 85 percent of its flights delayed, and SkyWest, which had 11 diversions Friday afternoon, was also operating on a delayed schedule.
Another effect of winter snow is power outages.
Jeff Hymas, spokesman for Rocky Mountain Power, said there were two large power outages in Northern Utah on Friday, but only one was weather-related.
One outage began at 7:30 a.m. Friday, when a car hit and broke a power pole in Huntsville, leaving 1,600 customers in Huntsville and Eden without power.
By 9:30 a.m., Hymas said, crews were able to reduce the number of customers without power to 763, but because the power pole had to be replaced, the number of customers without power jumped back up near 1,600 around 2:30 p.m.
It took crews about an hour to restore power to those Huntsville and Eden homes.
The other power outage was caused by a few Mylar balloons getting caught in the power lines just before 11 a.m. Friday.
The balloons came in contact with a 46-kilovolt transmission line and caused one phase of the line to burn up and fall to the ground, shutting down power to 4,472 customers in Ogden, Harrisville and Farr West, Hymas said.
Crews were able to reroute power to those customers just before 1 p.m.
In order to clear the balloons from the lines, though, crews were forced to cut power to some distribution lines, which Hymas said left 3,334 Ogden customers powerless for less than a half hour.
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