Snow, sleet slow Suffolk down

Emergency crews in Suffolk worked nonstop for much of the day Thursday responding to dozens of accidents across the city as snow and then sleet blanketed the area.

Suffolk settled in under the falling flakes starting about 10 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., police dispatchers were busy calling for emergency response to the scenes of multiple accidents, winding up the day having dispatched officers to dozens of crashes.

“There were more than 20 accidents within the first hour of snow falling,” Suffolk spokesperson Debbie George said. In fact, some officers responding to the scene of one accident would wind up working three more in the same spot before they were done, she said.

Route 58 was the site of many of those accidents, including one where a tractor-trailer jackknifed at the Quaker Swamp Curve, George said.

None of the crashes resulted in life-threatening injuries, she added.

By about 1 p.m., the snow turned to sleet. By that time, all city offices were closed, traffic had become light in the downtown area, and the rate of accidents had slowed.

“The officers ran heavy for a solid two and a half hours,” George said. Then the road conditions began to change as temperatures climbed a couple of degrees and the 28 public works trucks that were assigned to the task began to catch up with the job of clearing the roads.

George said those trucks would run all night Thursday, as well, and that a decision on whether to open city offices on Friday would be made later that evening.

The city’s public and private schools all had decided early to remain closed on Thursday. Bethanne Bradshaw, spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools, said in an email Thursday afternoon that a determination would be made about today’s plans following a 4 a.m. tour of the city by school transportation employees.

“As the largest city in Virginia in land mass, the road conditions can vary significantly between the rural southern regions and the urban northern areas,” she stated. “The safety of students and staff, both in buses and cars, is our top priority.”

The Children’s Center daycare announced Thursday evening that it would be on a three-hour delay for Friday, with opening scheduled for 9:30 at all three locations.

According to Larry Brown, a forecaster at the National Weather Service’s Wakefield station, most of the area got about 2 inches of precipitation on Thursday. Meteorologists had been forecasting accumulations to reach closer to 5 inches, he said, but the snow turned to sleet a bit earlier than they had expected.

Today’s forecast, he said is for continued cold, but no precipitation. The weekend is Brown’s greater concern.

He and other forecasters are watching a system that is expected to develop over the Gulf of Mexico tonight and head northeast for the Carolina coast by Saturday afternoon.

“It’s still pretty uncertain,” Brown said.

Depending on a variety of conditions, the Hampton Roads area could be hit with either rain or snow late Saturday and into Sunday morning.

“The snow amounts right now are pretty uncertain,” he said. “Once we see it develop in the Gulf, we can see how it’s moving.”