Winter weather
Warmer, wetter weather on the way
A Lookout Mountain truck spreads a load of salt in the 500 block of East Brow Road on Monday.
After a skidding, sliding start across the region early Monday with a 35-car pileup near Ringgold, Ga., and crash backups at the Interstate 75/Interstate 24 split at the height of rush hour in Chattanooga, temperatures are expected to climb into the low 60s by Thursday.
But don’t get too comfortable.
Light flurries could return to the forecast Saturday night, although it’s a little early to say whether winter weather will be as much a problem for travelers as it was Monday, when icy roads contributed to road closures and numerous traffic accidents across Hamilton and surrounding counties.
With wintry conditions predicted, many area schools delayed or canceled classes late Sunday and into Monday, but few were prepared for frozen travel early Monday.
The pileup at 6:44 a.m. Monday in Catoosa County, Ga., closed Interstate 75 for four hours, left 15 people injured and almost three dozen cars scattered across the northbound lanes, said Sheriff Gary Sisk.
The 15 injured folks — none of whom had life-threatening injuries — were taken for treatment to area hospitals, Sisk said. Of the 15, four went to Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, five to Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga and six to Memorial-Georgia in Fort Oglethorpe (formerly Cornerstone). Sisk said 14 more people were transported by bus to be reunited with their families.
Georgia Department of Transportation crews responded to the area with salt trucks and worked with Georgia Emergency Management Agency personnel on an estimated 100-gallon diesel fuel spill.
The crash initially was blamed on the weather, but Georgia State Patrol personnel are investigating to determine the official cause, Sisk said.
Icy conditions on roads across the region led to closures of the W Road and Roberts Mill Road on Signal Mountain. U.S. Highway 127 on the west side of Walden’s Ridge also was icy, as were most roads on Lookout Mountain on both sides of the Tennessee/ Georgia state line.
The W Road was opened mid-afternoon on Monday, while Roberts Mill Road remains closed today as crew continue to mop up the remains of the frozen mess.
In Northeast Alabama, roads on Lookout Mountain and Sand Mountain were icy in DeKalb and Jackson counties, forcing many closures. DeKalb officials announced early Monday that all county roads had become impassable, but by midday most were deemed passable.
The frozen precipitation didn’t build up significantly on power lines.
The only power outage in Hamilton County that was directly related to the icy conditions involved a vehicle that slid off the road and hit a power pole in the Rock Creek Road and Patterson Road area. EPB workers were called to begin repairs at around 9:30 Monday morning, and a spokesperson said repairs were estimated to be done by 4:30 p.m.
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Matt Lea said only one person was in the vehicle at the time. He said the person’s condition was not available.
In the rural region west of Chattanooga, there were no outages reported Monday in the Sequatchie Valley Electric Cooperative service area, which provides electric power to about 34,000 homes and businesses in the majority of Marion, Sequatchie, Bledsoe and Grundy counties, as well as smaller portions of Van Buren, Hamilton, Cumberland, Rhea, Coffee and Franklin counties.