Oklahoma’s first ice storm of 2024 brought with it treacherous and hazardous road conditions, closed some schools and forced others to go virtual.
Freezing rain and drizzle started falling Sunday evening continuing into the overnight into Monday morning causing hundreds of traffic snarls and collisions, closing one area highway for several hours.
Lindell Standlee works for District 3 County Commissioner Lee Doolen and has worked in county government 15 years, two in Pottawatomie County and 13 in Lincoln County.
“For the first time since I was a kid, I couldn’t even get up my hill. It was a solid sheet of ice. It was really rough,” he said.
Doolen said his crew didn’t work Monday because of the icy conditions.
“If you don’t let it dry out, you can pull up asphalt, or chip and seal.,” Standlee said. “You can tear up more and it’s really hard on the equipment, especially when the temperatures have been down to between 0 and 10 degrees like it has recently.
“Sometimes the rock we are hauling will freeze in the trailers.”
Standlee said he operates a motor grader about 90 to 95 percent of the timew but he’s capable of running a backhoe, track hoe and a dozer.
He was expecting the crew would be back to work on Tuesday. “There’s always something to do,” he said. “We change out grader tires, we try to always have two front tires and four to five back tires ready, services machines, we do maintenance on the equipment, clean up the shop.
“There’s always something,” he reiterated.
Standlee continued, “I’ll probably work Friday. I have my own area. It runs from the Lincoln-Pottawatomie County line to Sunny Side Cemetery (1020 Road) and from four miles east of Meeker west all the way to White Rock Road.
“I have a large route and I try not to back track while I’m working,” he said.
Charlotte Brown, Lincoln County Emergency Management Deputy Director, said Monday, “we mainly assisted stranded motorists.
“There was a multivehicle collision that occurred around 3 a.m. Monday on SH 102 and U.S. 62 that closed U.S. 62 from 102 to 3340 Road for several hours. There were no injuries reported,” she said.
The ice storm impacted some area businesses as well.
Jennifer Hessman is a document team leader at Vision Bank in Meeker.
“All of the employees who were scheduled in made it in to work Monday,” she said.
“The main highways were better by morning, and the other roads were passable, you just had to take it slow.
“I only live a couple of blocks away so I just took it slow and didn’t have any problems,” Hessman added.
For school superintendents, taking the call to close schools wasn’t easy, even with many in the area having virtual days.
A number of superintendents were out driving the roads on Sunday night, trying to determine when to make the call and what it would be while also keeping an eye on the forecast.
White Rock Superintendent Alicia Ebers said she took her four-wheel drive Jeep out around 9 p.m. to try and make the best call possible. She saw other schools in the Shawnee area were already closing but wanted to see for herself what the conditions were like in her area. The school was one of several that had a snow day on Monday.
“I think about the safety of whether staff can get there. Big on my mind are bus drivers,” she said.
Ebers recalled years ago when she was assistant principal and had to make the call while the superintendent was out of town. She decided to keep the school open, and they were one of the only ones in the area.
“I can still remember standing in the parking lot and seeing the bus slide when he tried to stop to turn in,” she said. “So I just try to be very cautious.”
Chandler, Stroud and Agra schools opted to go virtual, though Agra has a unique system in place that Superintendent Jeff Kelly calls a hybrid day. Rather than completely closing schools, they have a smaller staff onsite and parents can bring their students in.
“There’s a small percentage that have to go to work and they don’t have anywhere for their kids to go,” Kelly said. “Now, today, we didn’t do hybrid because it was going to be too slick for all of our staff to get in.” However, they have successfully used the hybrid day recently.
Chandler Superintendent Scott Baade was out driving the roads Sunday night around 9 to 9:30 p.m. as well. “When I got to a hill and I had to stop, and I’m afraid of sliding back down, I thought this is definitely time to call it,” Baade said.
It would have been tough for buses, especially with conditions worsening overnight.
Baade said remote lessons make things a bit easier, though it’s still not a decision he likes to make, considering it could put students’ safety at risk.
As a parent, Chandler resident Brian Christy said he is grateful for virtual learning.
“It helps when they’re sick, too,” he said. Christy works with the Midwest City Fire Department and was stuck there after his shift ended at 7 a.m. Monday morning. “It’s been really bad. The main highways or the main streets are slush as long as the trucks have been on them, but the side streets are almost impassable.”
Even though Stroud Schools went virtual, Superintendent Joe Van Tuyl still made it into his office Monday morning. He sent out the notice around 7:25 p.m. on Sunday, wanting to inform parents as early as he could.
“Parents like to be able to make those decisions about what the next day looks like the night before,” Van Tuyl said. “And I think you’ll see that as a trend across the state that we have a greater ability to know those things sooner and at least make an educated decision about what we think it’s going to look like.”
Jessica Martinez, a teacher in Stroud and parent, said her day wasn’t all that different as at the high school, they do everything through Google Classroom. She’s also available to get on Google Meet or communicate via email if any students have questions.
Virtual school looks different depending on the grade. Her first grader can complete her lessons whenever she wants, while her fifth grader has scheduled video conferences throughout the day.
After her husband’s truck got stuck on the road last night, Martinez said she was just going to stay home and wait until everything thaws out.
“I’m good with virtual days,” she said. “I’m glad we have them.”