Southwest Mississippians awoke Saturday to frigid weather and hard shells of ice on cars, houses and yards. Trees bent under the weight of icy shrouds.
If people were lucky, they also awoke to a home with electricity and intact plumbing. Temperatures fell by morning to the low 20s.
Beginning midday Friday, ice began to appear on roads in Amite and Wilkinson counties.
In McComb, rain that had fallen sporadically throughout the day turned in the late afternoon to BB-size ice pellets coming down in waves. Accompanied by strong wind, the freezing rain stung when it hit exposed skin.
All area schools closed early Friday afternoon to give students time to go home before the worst weather struck.
Many businesses closed early on Friday. By early evening restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses had called it quits, some out of concern for the safety of their employees and customers, others because they had no electricity.
At Kroger on Delaware Avenue, where a handful of shoppers tried to make purchases around 6 p.m., the power fluttered briefly and then gave out completely, leaving the store dark except for a few emergency lights in the ceiling.
Staff and shoppers stayed where they were, hoping the dark interlude would be brief, but it wasn’t meant to be.
“They’ve never been off this long,” said a clerk by way of apology to a customer she had to send away without groceries because her cash register didn’t work.
As many as 2,500 Entergy customers were without power Friday night, according to company spokesman Bill Howard. But by morning the number was down to about 350 across Pike and Walthall counties.
As of late Saturday afternoon only 36 Entergy customers were still in the dark, all of them in the Edgewood Park area, but Howard said power would be restored there by evening.
Although no more rain is expected and a brief period of above-freezing temperatures Saturday afternoon melted some of the ice, Howard said the risk is not over from tree limbs hitting or falling on power lines.
“There’s a lot of load out there,” he said, “and if the wind picks up we could have some damage.”
Magnolia Electric Power’s online outage map showed Saturday evening that 55 of its customers were without power.
Area law enforcement officials said Saturday there had been several weather-related accidents.
Sheriff’s Department Chief Investigator Chris Bell and Amite County Sheriff Tim Wroten said the accidents mostly involved cars sliding off the pavement after hitting icy patches.
McComb fire captain Warren Agnor said his department responded at 8:09 p.m. Friday to the northbound onramp to Interstate 55 at Veterans Boulevard. A car had slid off the roadway and rolled once between the ramp and the highway itself, ejecting the male occupant.
AAA Ambulance transported the man to Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, but Agnor did not know his condition.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol investigated 134 traffic crashes statewide overnight and said that rain and icing of the roadways played a significant role in them.
MHP Cpl. Brandon Fortenberry said Saturday that all the accidents he knew of were vehicles skidding off of roads.
Precipitation has moved out of southwest Mississippi but the frigid conditions are hanging on for another night.
National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Wagner said the temperature in McComb was expected to plummet Saturday night to 17 degrees, with a wind chill factor as low as 10.
A hard freeze warning is in effect until 9 a.m. Sunday, with temperatures not expected to top the freezing mark until around noon.
A warming trend will begin Sunday, when the mercury will reach 42 degrees. By midweek, area temperatures will be in the 70s, well above average.
