Nine-year-old Trenton Barnes takes advantage of the extra days out of school as he and his brothers played on the icy hills near their home. (Photo by Larry Barnes)


Snow Day
Winter weather hits the state

Stacy Barnes

Winter weather made its way into town as predicted on Friday, causing many parents to pick their kids up early from school.

Mustang school’s Superintendent Karl Springer estimated that 65 to 70 percent of students were already home before the busses ran their afternoon routes. He said many parents had called the schools to see if they would close early, but the administrator said that would never happen.

“Parents need to know we will keep our schools open. Even if a bunch of students have gone home we will still have somebody there to make sure the kids are taken care of,” said Springer. “Short of a nuclear explosion, if we have school, parents can know we will have school all day.”

Despite crews working throughout the weekend, school was canceled Tuesday and Wednesday due to icing on residential streets and in school parking lots. City manager David Cockrell said he was pleased with the way crews cleared the streets and expressed relief that the majority of precipitation fell in the form of sleet and not freezing rain.

“This would have been an extremely expensive storm had it come down in the form of freezing rain,” he said. “As it is, it was very inexpensive. All told it was probably less than $10,000—a lot less than what we were planning for.”

In addition to the usual salt and sand mixtures, the city used a new product to melt the ice and give drivers some traction on the road. Cockrell said the chemical, haydite, worked well on the sleet where it is difficult to apply sand.

As of Monday there had been no accidents in the city limits that could be attributed to the hazardous road conditions, Cockrell said.

“Accidents are usually a good measure of your response,” he said.

The worst ice storm in recent history to hit the area was in January 2002. Cockrell said it cost the city in excess of $300,000.