March 29, 2024

Adair County receives first snow storm of the season

Adair Countians experienced their first bonafide snow storm of the year late last week and into the weekend.

Anticipation began to build as schools, including Orient-Macksburg, Nodaway Valley and many others, cancelled school for Friday as early as Thursday night at 9 p.m.

Snow began to fall about an hour before sunrise Friday. Heavy snowflakes were a part of the storm Friday morning and winds began to pick up, creating hazardous driving conditions for anyone trying to travel around the state.

When all was said and done, approximately 5 1/2 inches of snow fell in Greenfield. A wintry mixture of precipitation fell after the snow concluded, complicating travel even more.

There were a few traffic incidents. The Iowa State Patrol reports that a multi-car crash on Interstate 80 near Adair backed up traffic for awhile and even closed a small portion of the highway for a time. There were other minor mishaps throughout the county that motorists endured as the storm went through.

According to County Engineer Nick Kauffman, the freezing rain that fell Friday afternoon mostly worked in the favor of crews working to get the county’s rock and paved roads cleared.

“We were out on Friday and Saturday. Friday was a little bit of a challenge but with that rain, it settled the snow down so it didn’t blow any more, so it really wasn’t much of an issue,” Kauffman explained, saying Tuesday that the rock roads were much improved by then. “We’re in good shape. We’ve got more salt coming.”

Kauffman did say that one of the county’s plows slid off the road Saturday morning when blowing snow hindered the driver’s vision of the road, and no one was injured.

In addition to snow days that occurred Friday for area school children, basketball games that were scheduled for Friday at Nodaway Valley were pushed up to Thursday evening. Saturday, the Wolverine teams had games scheduled again but they were postponed, due to the weather, until Monday. A wrestling tournament Nodaway Valley was due to attend at Griswold was cancelled.

Early afternoon Saturday, a Winter Storm Warning was downgraded for the immediate area to a Winter Weather Advisory and bitterly cold wind chills set in. A small number of mainly rural church congregations cancelled services Sunday.

Another winter storm system was expected to arrive late Tuesday night or early Wednesday bringing more snow chances until Friday, although temperatures were also due to begin to rebound with this system’s arrival.