Approximately two inches of snow, sleet and freezing rain fell on Starkville this weekend, causing accidents, closures and other headaches for local residents.
But the storm also gave Mississippi State University students, as well as students in public and private schools in Starkville and Oktibbeha County, a day off.
Neither Starkville nor Oktibbeha County has snowplows or salt trucks, but city and county road crews spent Sunday and early Monday salting bridges and other icy patches by any means possible.
In Starkville, road crews rigged tractors with salt spreaders and began salting bridges Sunday, continuing through this morning, City Engineer Edward Kemp said. Kemp was preparing for a meeting this morning, during which road crews planned to prioritize what streets to salt throughout the day.
“We don”t have plows and, as you can probably imagine, we”re not really set up for storms of this nature just because of the infrequency we have them,” Kemp said. “This morning we”re prioritizing, going out and doing evaluations to find out what streets are like, and then we”re going to get together and get a plan from there. We have over 120 miles of roads, so there”s not really a whole lot we can do as far as salting or plowing every road. What we want to do is encourage people to stay off the roads because there are some areas out there that are icy and slick.”
The city already had some salt, but went out and bought more in anticipation of the storm, Kemp said. Oktibbeha County did the same, Posey said.
The county bought “several tons” of salt and sand for icy bridges and roads, Posey said. Crews then went out and used shovels to disperse the salt and sand where ice had accumulated, Posey said.
“They started doing it once it started accumulating and once bridges started freezing over,” Posey said.
Oktibbeha County Fire Services Coordinator Kirk Rosenhan said there were “several” wrecks throughout the county last night, though there were “not a lot of injuries.” Emergency responders were at a wreck in Clayton Village where a pickup truck hauling a trailer slid off the side of the road around 5 p.m. when they received another call from Highway 82, about 1 1/2 miles west of Starkville, where a vehicle had slid off the road, went down an embankment and struck a culvert wall. The driver and passenger received minor injuries, Rosenhan said.
The slick roads caused Starkville city offices to close today for all non-essential city employees. The Starkville Police Department, Fire Department and Street Department are on duty, but remaining city employees are off, Mayor Parker Wiseman said.
“That”s a call we make when it”s too dangerous for employees to get to City Hall,” Wiseman said.
Oktibbeha County delayed opening for non-essential employees until noon, Posey said.
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