Slick Valley roads make travel risky

A county snowplow and a motorist had a collision.

VINDICATOR STAFF REPORT

Many motorists’ Friday wake-up call was a slow and treacherous slide to work, with heavy snow causing fender-benders and setting back weekend holiday shopping plans.

With freezing rain in the forecast for tonight and Sunday, this marks the second holiday shopping weekend marred by bad weather.

Kenneth Kollar, general manager of the Eastwood Mall in Niles, said Friday’s snow may have kept some shoppers away, but he didn’t see a dramatic decrease in the number. He was optimistic about today.

“This is Ohio, and I think a little bit of snow adds to the holiday shopping experience,” he said. “Everybody roots for a white Christmas.”

Kollar said he’s confident in the mall’s maintenance crews, the contractor for snow removal and the street department of area communities that motorists won’t be kept away.

Today should start out nice for this time of the year with partially sunny skies and temperatures in the low to mid-30s, said Jim Kosarik, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland.

But come tonight and Sunday morning, the freezing rain will fall. There is also the possibility of snow or sleet.

Temperatures should rise above freezing by Sunday afternoon, Kosarik said.

“We’ll have unsettled weather through the first half of next week,” he said.

With 2.6 inches of snow recorded between midnight and 1 p.m. Friday, the Mahoning Valley has 13.8 inches of snow for December. The area averages 12.2 inches of snow for the entire month.

Friday midmorning in Youngstown, police were handling crashes, some with injuries, at Wick Avenue and the Westbound Service Road, at Interstate 680 and Market Street, Interstate 680 and the 711 Connector, and I-680 at Belle Vista Avenue.

“We’ve been busy, that’s for sure,” said Capt. Robert Kane, dayturn watch commander at the Youngstown Police Department. “The roads are treacherous.”

The Ohio State Highway Patrol Canfield post responded to crashes — vehicles that slid off the road — on I-680, I-76 and state Route 11. No serious injuries were reported.

Mahoning County Engineer Richard Marsico said one of his plows collided with a motorist at South Avenue and Western Reserve Road. The motorist was faulted and the accident was fairly minor. That truck was back to its route, along with the county’s other 21 trucks, by noon, he said.

The Trumbull County Engineer’s Office ran into an interesting twist Friday morning as there wasn’t much snowfall in the northern section of the county, north of state Route 88. Normally, the heavier snowfall is in the “snow belt” north of Route 88.

John Deane, highway superintendent at the engineer’s office, said he mustered 24 plows Friday morning that were able to concentrate on county roads in the southern portion of the county.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol in Southington reported a number of vehicles sliding off the road, mostly on state Route 11.

Jeff Greenburg, Mercer County communications director, noted that emergency personnel have had to respond to several wintertime accidents in recent years on the interstates, notably Interstate 80, that each involved more than 20 vehicles.

As a result, the Mercer County Department of Public Safety will be conducting an exercise beginning at 10 a.m. Sunday at the Sunset Drag Strip on Charleston Road in Jefferson Township. It will include a multiple-vehicle accident with a small hazardous-materials component and will consist of the emergency services that generally provide emergency response on the Interstate highways in Mercer County.