“Right now, it looks very iffy,” said Mike Mulheirn, executive director of facilities and transportation for the district. “Our main concern is that we are looking at another inch of snow and that the temperatures are supposed to drop significantly.”As for today, they made the right decision but I would have made the decision to cancel last night based on the forecast at the time.
Mulheirn said the city streets and highways “look good” but the back roads and subdivisions were still “troublesome” as of 2 p.m. Tuesday.
“We would really like to make the call on whether to have school on Wednesday today, but it might be early Wednesday morning,” he said. “We will know more later this evening.”
In Louisville, city officials are awaiting the freezing roads that come with the overnight drop in temperatures and another round of accumulation.
“This is not snowmeggedon,” Abramson said at a press conference. “We’ve made it through the morning, but now the concern is what happens when the temperature drops.”
Temperatures could drop 10 to 12 degrees in the matter of a couple of hours beginning around 4 p.m., which is a significant drop in a short time, said Erin Snavely, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
“Slush on the roadways could refreeze,” she said.
Snavely said the Louisville area has received between 6 and 7 inches since the snow began to fall late Monday night.
Crews have treated 3,500 miles of two-lane highways since they began salting and plowing late Monday night and there is still an abundance of salt at the city’s disposal, Abramson said.
Snowfall overnight and Tuesday morning left roads and highways covered, but there have been no reports of major injury accidents because of road conditions, according to local emergency dispatches.
Abramson said during the heaviest snowfall Tuesday morning that most of the calls to police were about stranded motorists and vehicles that slid off roadways.
MetroSafe reported that between 11 p.m. Monday and 10 a.m. Tuesday there were 38 calls about stranded motorists and 18 injury accidents out of a total of more than 315 calls to police.
As of 11 a.m., Louisville metro officials were reporting that major thoroughfares and side streets were still “snow-covered” and “slushy.”
Jefferson County public and Catholic schools are closed for the day, as are many other school districts across the region.
Louisville Public Works crews have been plowing and treating roads since 11 p.m. Monday, said Lindsay English, a spokeswoman for the mayor. “We’re making as many passes on routes as we can,” she said, but the continued snowfall is making it difficult for crews to keep roads clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment