gchildress@heraldsun.com; 419-6645
Chapel Hill -- The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, Chatham and Orange counties school districts will remain closed today as a result of a winter storm that dumped several inches of snow and ice on the region over the weekend.
Officials said their decisions were made to keep schools closed today because roads on some bus routes were still impassable Monday afternoon.
With temperatures expected to fall into the 20s overnight, the slush created by higher temperatures on Monday was expected to freeze and create hazardous travel conditions by morning.
"While roads in the southern part of the county and Hillsborough are clear, the vast majority of bus routes in the northern part of the county are impassable," said Orange County Schools spokesman Michael Gilbert. "Our children's safety is of the utmost importance. We don't want to take any chances."
Gilbert said officials will check to see how much of the ice and snow has melted away this afternoon to make a decision about opening schools on Wednesday.
"It really could depend on what we're looking at Wednesday," Gilbert said. "With another day of melting, we could be OK."
Chatham County Schools officials also said impassable secondary roads led the district to call off school today.
"The secondary roads, which we have a lot of, are still in pretty bad shape," said Chatham County Schools Superintendent Robert Logan.
Logan said he and Assistant Superintendent for Auxiliary Services David Moody drove around on Monday to assess road conditions.
Accidents
Over the weekend, the snow and ice created hazardous driving conditions and caused accidents throughout the county.
Sgt. T.D. Frye of the N.C. Highway Patrol said the snow and ice caused a lot of problems for drivers in Orange County, many of whom simply didn't adjust to adverse driving conditions.
Frye said the Highway Patrol responded to 19 vehicle collisions between 5 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday.
"They were just going too fast for the conditions," Frye said. "That was the cause of 99 percent of the collisions."
During that same period, Frye said, there were 75 calls for service, some involving stranded motorists who had driven their cars off the road.
Back to normal
The Town of Chapel Hill and UNC resumed near-normal operations on Monday, with classes at the university starting at 10 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. The university will operate on its regular schedule today.
All town services resumed with the exception of Monday trash collection, which was rescheduled due to road conditions from the winter storm.
Officials said Monday's route will be collected on Tuesday if road conditions permit. If roads still are icy today, Monday's route will be collected on Feb. 3 and Tuesday's route will be collected Feb. 4.
Town officials said public works crews would remain busy with plowing and de-icing work over the next few days.
Monday curbside recycling services provided by Orange County were also cancelled.
Orange County
Because of road conditions and low overnight temperatures, Orange County officials decided to operate government offices on a two-hour delay this morning. Offices that normally open at 8 a.m. are now scheduled to open at 10 a.m.
The Orange County Landfill and Solid Waste Convenience Centers were open during regular hours Monday and will open today on a two-hour delay.
