GREENVILLE SCHOOLS AND OFFICES CLOSED

Nearly 30,000 customers of Duke Energy are without power, and children in at least six Upstate counties are looking forward to a holiday Monday as the winter’s first snowstorm continues to rumble across the Upstate.


Closed school districts include: Greenville County schools and offices; Pickens County; Anderson Districts 1, 4, and 5, Laurens District 55, Oconee County and Spartanburg District 5.

In less than four hours, state troopers responded to more than 130 calls about collisions, hazards in roads and motorists who needed help in Greenville, Anderson, Pickens and Oconee counties, according to the state Highway Patrol.

Lance Cpl. Kathy Hiles of the Highway Patrol advised people to stay home if they can. Those who do go out should allow their cars to warm up and their windows to clear, she said.


She also recommended that motorists carry a charged cell phone and blanket. If there is a wreck, it could take a while for emergency services to get there, she said. ¶
Snow and ice caused WSPA-TV’s tower on Hogback Mountain to collapse, injuring no one but interfering with normal service for some viewers, said the station’s marketing director Megan Hannigan. ¶

Dish Network customers can pick up CBS programming on the analog tier, while viewers with a digital converter box can tune in on channel 62.2, she said. Charter Communications customers are unaffected, Hannigan said. ¶

The National Weather Service in Greer received several reports of thunder rumbling while it snowed, which happens every four or five years in the Upstate, said meteorologist Justin Lane. ¶

"It means that you’re probably going to have some very heavy snow falling," he said. "It’s basically a thunderstorm, but instead of rain falling you have snow falling." ¶

Fourteen trucks from the state Department of Transportation were out monitoring roads and applying salt and sand where needed, said Kevin Coyle, an assistant resident maintenance engineer in Greenville. ¶

Coyle urged drivers to give the DOT trucks room to work. ¶

"You can't apply this type of mixture at 60 mph," he said. "You've got to slow down to do it." ¶

Greenville firefighters decided about 6 p.m. to put chains on the tires of all their trucks. The decision came after a battalion chief drove some of the city's steeper streets to see how slick they were, said Lt. Chris Shipman. ¶

"We're very cautious on that," he said. "If there's one bad street in the city, most of the time we go ahead and chain them up just to be safe." ¶

While Duke Energy had crews ready to go throughout South and North Carolina, it generally takes eight inches of snow to cause widespread outages, spokesman Dave Scanzoni said. ¶

"We’ve got our folks working on it in all the affected areas, and we can always bring in more if necessary," he said. ¶

The storm is expected to leave behind a slushy mess that could freeze on the roads overnight, according to the Weather Service. ¶

Greenville and areas to the north are expected to receive about 2-4 inches of snow, while areas to the south and east will get 3-5 inches, said meteorologist Bryan McAvoy of the Weather Service. ¶

McAvoy said the snow should last until about midnight.

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Courtesy: Paul Alongi-Staff Writer