Winter makes a brief appearance

Depending on who was answering, Sunday evening’s fast-moving winter storm left behind a blessing or a headache.

“I was beginning to think I was going to have to take the family on a ski trip just to have some fun in the snow this year,” Wes Moore said. “This is just as much fun and a lot cheaper.”

Moore and his 9-year-old daughter, Haley, were among a group of Mayodan sledders enjoying the steep, snow-covered hill along Second Avenue near the recreation center Monday morning. Even the long walk back to the top did not seem so bad when weighed against the possibility of not having snow this season.

“This is great,” Joseph Johnson said. “Not as fast coming down as skiing, but there’s a lot less equipment to fool with.”

Joseph, 16, and his brother, Thomas, 12, were also zipping down the hill Monday and pulling their sleds back to the top to do it all over again.

But even those that did not welcome the season’s first snow event were pleased it left as quietly as it arrived.

“This really could have been a lot worse than it was,” Mayodan Police Chief Charles Caruso said. “We were very fortunate to get off lightly this time.”

Caruso said his department’s officers did not report a single accident resulting from sleet and snow that fell Sunday afternoon and evening. He credited both the wisdom of people staying in and the quick response of the town’s public works crews.

“I called the guys in about eight o’clock Sunday night to start clearing streets,” Cliff Ellington, Mayodan’s public works director, said.

Ellington said he and three other town employees worked until about 1:30 a.m. Monday, but had Mayodan’s streets passable before heading back home.

“We also cleared and salted the sidewalks and areas around town hall to prepare it for business Monday morning,” he said. “Fortunately, the streets were already fairly warm from last week’s mild temperatures, and things did not refreeze overnight.”

Ellington said Mayodan does not use salt on streets, but usually pre-treats ahead of storms with brine. Since Sunday’s winter storm began as rain, the brine would have been washed off before the snow arrived.

“We just decided to come in after things stopped and start plowing,” Ellington said.

The first snow event of this winter resulted from the collision of two low pressure fronts – a surface low moving up from the south and an upper-level low moving east across the mountains. Wide bands of heavier snow fell where the two fronts met in areas with cold enough temperatures.

Patrick Wilson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, said the amount of snow Rockingham County received was unexpected.

“This was a pretty complex storm,” Wilson said. “It was hard to predict.”

Snowfall reports from NWS indicated parts of Rockingham County received as much as 3.5 inches of snow. Wilson said the reason the county received such high amounts while only under a winter weather advisory was because the upper-level low picked up a northeasterly wind that dropped temperatures below freezing.

Some areas in the Virginia mountains had snow totals up to 8 inches. Wilson said Rockingham County could have seen such amounts if the air had been colder at the beginning of the storm and the precipitation had not started as rain.

Madison Police Chief Perry Webster said he was glad the storm was not worse.

“We had a few minor accidents around town, but were fortunate not to have any injuries,” Webster said.

One of those accidents involved a Madison patrol car. Webster said the Madison officer was assisting a Rockingham County Sheriff’s deputy with an accident when the patrol car slid off the road into a guard rail.

“We really do consider ourselves blessed in light of all the accidents reported elsewhere in the county and around the Piedmont region,” Webster said. “I just hope everyone keeps in mind things could get bad again Monday night and Tuesday morning, and drive extra cautious.”

Due to temperatures dipping into the 20s overnight Monday, roads were expected to refreeze. The resulting black ice was expected to make Tuesday’s commute hazardous due to black ice. Temperatures are expected to rise back into the mid- and upper-60s by Thursday.

Staff writer Danielle Battaglia contributed to this story.