Morning Report – March 3, 2014

DEM Blogger

March 3, 2014

Good morning, Lexington. As promised, we’ve* been in the emergency operations center all night, monitoring the weather situation and consuming coffee. Our Facebook and Twitter feeds have the overnight updates, should you want to review them. Here’s the current picture from our office and around Fayette County.

DEM’s parking lot on the morning of March 3, 2014. Representative of conditions across Fayette County.

Weather: The worst of this system – the ice which, at times, was expected to reach three-quarters of an inch – has bypassed us. The system yielded much more sleet than expected, which radically reduced the snowfall accumulation. Current totals in Lexington are about three inches on the ground. Another band of snow is now moving into the area and we can expect up to another inch by the time it moves out this afternoon.

Travel: In a word: hazardous. County and state road crews are scraping as quickly as they can but they’re fighting a sandwich** of ice, sleet, and snow. Patches of ice will remain even on roads that appear to have been cleared recently, and blowing snow will reduce visibility. We don’t recommend that you travel today. If you absolutely must, however, take the time to fully clear all your windows before you depart. On the roads, take it slow, give yourself extra stopping distance, and stay alert for other drivers’ behavior. Right now, the Lexington city traffic ticker is showing only a few traffic-related stoppages. Let’s keep it that way.

(Edited to add: If you’re planning on flying out of Blue Grass Airport today, there are some delays and cancellations. Check your flight status online at Blue Grass Airport’s site.)

Power: The lack of ice means we’re very lucky in this area. At this time, Kentucky Utilities’ outage map shows only one small outage, which should be restored in the next half-hour. Blue Grass Energy’s outage map shows no outages for their Fayette County customers.

At this time, the traffic issues – with which we should all be familiar after the last couple of months – are the only major problem affecting Fayette County. Let’s all count ourselves fortunate. Stay home, stay warm, and stay safe. We’ll keep you posted.

* Actually, John and Tim were in the EOC all night. Your humble correspondent was off-duty and asleep on the emergency operations couch.

** With the number of different layers out there, it’s really more of a lasagna, but no one uses pasta analogies to describe road conditions. Maybe they should. Mmm, pasta.