By John Surratt and Brandon O’Connor

The Vicksburg Post

Vicksburg and Warren County buttoned up as snow and subfreezing temperatures hit the area for a second time in two months.

As of 2 p.m. Tuesday, emergency workers had responded to 34 vehicle accidents as conditions on the roads continued to worsen.

The snow began falling in the early morning hours Tuesday and continued through most of the day. The combination of snow, predicted low temperatures and the potential for icing on roads, streets and bridges, forced city and county governments and many area businesses to close for the day.

Warren County Emergency Management director John Elfer said although precipitation stopped falling Tuesday afternoon, what had accumulated was going to freeze and continue to makes the roadways more hazardous.

“It is going to freeze and what is not frozen is definitely going to freeze and what is frozen is going to stay frozen,” Elfer said. “A lot of the side streets in the city and county that don’t get a lot of traffic, most of those are frozen. Some of the roads in the city that get a lot of traffic like Halls Ferry and the Frontage roads, most of those are alright, but they all have slick spots on them.”

Elfer said the worst roads were US 61 North and 465.

“We are working a lot of wrecks on 61 North,” he said. “That seems to be one of the worst one, 465 all the bridges have ice on them and that isn’t going to thaw out until tomorrow afternoon. We don’t have any more precipitation, but road conditions are not going to improve.

“Stay home if you don’t need to travel. If they do need to travel they need to slow down. If they think they are driving too slow, slow down even more. That is what is getting us today. People are driving too fast and you can’t drive on ice anyway. It is very difficult to negotiate ice.”

In the city, North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield said sections of Cherry Street was covered with ice and other streets are reported to have patches of ice.

“Right now the flat streets are OK and we’re not touching them. We are working on the hills. The streets like Mission 66 and Clay Street that are heavy traffic areas are still in good shape. We have a patch of ice on Mulvihill (Street) between Drummond and Confederate, but the crews are working on that.”

Mayfield said city streets were in good shape, and city crews were continuing to put gravel and sand on icy spots.

“We’ll have to see what happens tonight when the temperature drops,” he said. “We’ll have to watch the bridges and the roads later because the traffic will move that sand and rock out of the way.”

The National Weather in Jackson said temperatures will reach dangerous levels Tuesday night leading to hazardous conditions.

“You will see skies clearing out tonight. Very cold temperatures maybe getting down to about 10 degrees and with the wind chills you’ll see wind chill readings maybe dipping below zero,” NWS meteorologist Eric Carpenter said. “Very cold and dangerous night for anybody out there driving and traveling because of the icy roads. If anybody has to travel, I would strongly recommend they have plenty of fuel, dress in layers and have gloves and a hat in case you get stranded.”

The roads may see some improvement Wednesday, but temperatures will still be below freezing keeping all the ice on the roads from melting.

“The sun will be out tomorrow even though the temperature will stay below freezing all day,” Carpenter said. “With the sun coming out tomorrow, you may see some improvement. It may not really improve until Thursday.”

Mississippi Department of Transportation public information officer Jason Smith said MDOT is working to maintain the roads with focus on major routes.

“They have trucks out with salt and they’ve got some doing scrapping with snowplows clearing what is built up,” Smith said. “They are putting down slag on some of the bridges and some of the more stubborn spots. Crews are slagging major routes and doing as many of the bridges and minor routes as they are able to.”

Vicksburg street department crews were out early Tuesday morning checking and sanding city streets.

“We’ve been up before daylight getting ready,” said Mayfield, who is over the city’s public works department, which includes streets.

He said about 9:45 a.m. street crews were beginning to receive reports of hilltops and bridges starting to freeze over and were working to correct those problems.

“We’re going to continue to stay out and respond to problems so we can make sure first responders can get where they need to be if they’re called,” Mayfield said.

Police Chief Milton Moore said police responded to calls of several minor wrecks, adding the only major traffic problems were icing in roads and a utility pole falling across the westbound lanes of Interstate 20. He said officers worked several minor wrecks caused by weather conditions.

Vicksburg Fire Chief Craig Danczyk said he had extra firefighters on duty.

“We have five extra people on duty today than we normally do so we feel very good about our coverage,” he said Tuesday morning. “We do expect the conditions are going to deteriorate. We are encouraging people to shelter in place and minimize travel. I know I-20 will be traveled day and night. With these cold temperatures the road conditions are going to get worse before they get better. We are ready to go and will see what today brings,” Danczyk said.

Warren County fire coordinator Jerry Briggs said some volunteer firefighters were at their fire stations monitoring the weather and checking roads.