First snowfall hits county

By Wanda Combs
Editor

The first snowfall of the season caught drivers off guard Tuesday. Berlin Hill, assistant resident engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation, said 1-1/2 inches of snow fell in the hardest hit area of Floyd County, along Route 8 from the Patrick County line to Wills Ridge.
State Trooper Keith Gregory told the Press an estimated 45 vehicles wrecked as a result of the slick snow, which seemed to create the most chaos between 6:30 and 9:30 a.m.
The snow began falling Monday night, Gregory said, and the temperature at his house Tuesday morning in Copper Hill was 20 degrees. 
“Fairview Church Road to Tuggles Gap (on Route 8) was fairly shut down,” Gregory commented. “There was a ton of ice.” At Roberson Mill Road, he added, six vehicles “banged into each other.” Damage to the vehicles was minor.
Gregory said he stopped two tractor trailers that came along on Route 8, when they reached Roberson Mill Road. “I parked my car and blocked the road. We didn’t need any more cars down there.” The situation was helped when VDOT workers arrived and put down chemicals.
In the big “s” curve near Tuggles Gap, a mail truck was almost on its side. One vehicle had its front tires in the ditch and its other end in the road.
Another extremely slick spot was the road to Floyd Elementary School, Gregory told the Press. “It was a sheet of ice.” Gregory said parents after dropping their children off for school, which was held that day, had their vehicles slide off the road and “had to ride the ditch all the way to the bottom to get to Woods Gap Road.”
On Wills Ridge Road off Route 8, four cars and a school bus were stuck near the Mennonite Church. Two people were taken to the New River Valley Medical Center.
Another vehicle on Beaver Creek Road went over an embankment and landed in a creek, but the driver was not injured.
“It was super slick,” Gregory said, “and a 4 wheel drive didn’t make a difference.”