Published: December 24, 2008 05:43 pm      

Ice catches forecasters, responders off-guard

Two days before Christmas, Mother Nature gave Beckley a present its citizens probably wanted to return with the ugly ties, gaudy holiday sweaters and fruit cake.

Late Tuesday evening, light freezing rain and sleet froze on roadways throughout southern West Virginia — turning the roads into a dangerous skating rink as last-minute Christmas shoppers were in reported bumper-to-bumper traffic. Police said they had very little warning about the winter weather — if none at all — and handled scores of wrecks. Raleigh and Fayette counties appeared to be hardest-hit.

But meteorologists say only rain was in the forecast. A slight, unforeseen temperature drop for only a brief time period — that would have been difficult to predict — caused the mess.

Beckley Police Sgt. Frankie Shelton said city officers handled 10 wrecks within Tuesday’s 24-hour time period. Five of them were reported between 7:30 and 8 p.m.

“We had a lot last-minute Christmas shoppers out there, and it was bumper-to-bumper,” he said. “People were probably already out when it hit, and they were trying to get back home.”

Shelton said evening shift is always busy, and they had to handle the numerous wrecks on top of this heavy workload. Anytime police officers are confronted with such a situation, they handle the most serious calls first and proceed to the more routine ones.

“Some calls have to hold because we’re so busy,” he said.

Cpl. Andy Darlington said he was off-duty but out when the Tuesday night ice struck.

“It was a solid sheet of ice,” he said. “It made a skating rink out of the road. There were people in ditches, sliding...”

A friend was on the hard-hit Interstate 64, near Beaver, and relayed even worse conditions to him.

“There was a tractor trailer jackknifed and — literally — about 40 cars in the ditch on I-64,” Darlington said.

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Mark Pellerito, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Charleston, said forecasters originally believed the Beckley area would get nothing but rain. Conditions rapidly changed, and the NWS issued a Winter Weather Advisory around 7:20 p.m. Tuesday.

Before the rain fell and even when it started falling, temperatures were just above freezing at 34 degrees, Pellerito explained. However, a previous Arctic air mass in the region had cooled the ground. Dry air also cooled the atmosphere just enough to cause temperatures to briefly fall below freezing.

“It was a brief window,” he said. “Only two hundredths of an inch of precipitation was reported at the (Beckley-Raleigh County Memorial) Airport. That was just enough for icing.’

“...It was a narrow window. Those situations are difficult to predict.”

Pellerito did have good news for those residents weary of pre-Halloween and pre-Thanksgiving snows that have battered southern West Virginia this winter. At worst, residents would see a wet — not white — Christmas.

Today, a 43-degree high temperature is in the forecast, and the weather should stay “fairly dry,” Pellerito said. Rain hitting Wednesday night should quickly move away.

The region is also entering an, overall, warmer weather pattern, Pellerito noted. Temperatures in the 50s and 60s are in the forecast from Friday through Sunday.

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