School closings.
Accidents. Roads and walkways covered in an inch-thick skin of ice. Welcome to Jan. 25, 2004.
Last week, four-and-a-half inches of snow and ice hit the Greensboro area, shutting down Guilford County and surrounding counties. The snow was followed by sleet and below-freezing temperatures, which solidified the mass of snow and froze it into sheets of slippery ice.
Classes were cancelled at the college Jan. 26 and were cut short on Jan. 27.Eight thirty a.m. classes were cancled, and evening classes ended early at 9:30 p.m. College personnel laid down sand to cope with the ice, trying to make for a secure, if gritty, walk to class.
The snowstorm turned busy traffic thoroughfares, including Interstates 40 and 77, into long, flat plains of snow-covered ice.
“We’ve seen I don’t how many people just flying and slamming on brakes and then doing 360s,” Lisa Spencer, a dispatcher for a Greensboro towing company, said. According to the Greensboro News and Record, the Greensboro Highway patrol office responded to 305 wreck calls in a 12-hour period on Jan. 25. However, most of the wrecks were just fender-benders.
“It was tricky getting from my house to the college,” CCE student Melonie Butler, who is also a substitute teacher in Guilford County, said. “But, once I arrived at the college, it was a true test of my balance to get from my car to class without falling.”
Residents in Bryan Hall were also having a difficult time traveling to and from class. “Those metal steps covered with ice are just a law suit waiting to happen … it wouldn’t hurt the school to keep a couple of sacks of [rock salt] in case of ice,” sophomore Joanna Kelly, a resident of Bryan Hall, said.
Young people in the Greensboro area, including here at the college, used the time and slippery conditions to go sledding.
One of the hills on campus, just outside Milner Hall, was the most popular sledding spot; at one point, a chain of half a dozen people could be seen slipping down the short slope. “Even with the warmer weather of this week, I still have ice in my yard, and on my patio,” Butler said.
Even after several days of relatively warmer weather, patches of snow and ice still cover the grounds of the campus.