PIKEVILLE, Ky. — Almost exactly as predicted snowfall began early Friday evening in Pike and surrounding counties, moving north toward up the Big Sandy Valley, or U.S. 23, throughout the night, Highway Dsitrict 12 reported.

Driving was difficult to hazardous, depending on the time and the route, officials reported aaserting

Highway District 12’s snowfighters found conditions fairly consistent from county to county. Temperatures also remained about the same throughout the district, hovering in the mid-20s until early Saturday morning.

Most areas had between 4 and 8 inches of snow. On Pine Mountain, however, the second highest elevation in the state, the total reached about a foot before mid-morning on Saturday.

The eastern part of Pike County, along the Virginia border, tallied up to 10 inches in places like Ball Fork Mountain and Calloway Mountain.

Snowfighters worked all night without seeing black pavement for more than a few minutes. “As soon as you get a lane finished and turn around, it’s white again,” said Jeff Anderson, HEO III at Allen Maintenance. Anderson, who has been driving the same route for six years, said it was extremely hard to see during the night. At times snow was falling at a rate of an inch or more an hour.

“We pre-treated for a day and a half,” Joe Stanley pointed out. “Some places we pre-treated twice. That helped a lot in getting ahead of this storm. But you still can’t completely clear the roads until the snow stops falling and that hasn’t happened yet.” Stanley works out of the Pikeville Section Office and has nearly 30 years’ experience working snow and ice events in Pike County.

During the night on Friday/Saturday, snowfighters could be heard on their two-way radios making comments like “We’re getting hammered over here,” and “It ain’t fit for man nor beast out here.”

The texture of the snow made it fairly easy to plow, “but it just kept on coming down with no break,” Stanley said. This snow is moist but not heavy like the mid-December snow which caused massive power outages and thousands of downed trees and utility poles.

“Hopefully, once it stops falling, it won’t take long to clear everything,” said Doug Wright, Section Engineer in Johnson County. “That sort of depends on the temperature, though. If it drops to single digits as predicted, we could have re-freezing. That means treating and plowing will take longer.”

In fact, by early afternoon Saturday the snow on the roadways was already turning to ice.

State highway snowfighters and their support crew of mechanics, dispatchers, sign and signal specialists, and engineers will continue to work 24/7 until this weather event is over. District 12 has about 104 snowfighters out at any given time. In addition, because of the severity of this particular snow event, a number of contract snowplow operators are supplementing the sta

Before this storm started, the total materials cost incurred during this snow and ice season, which began November 1, 2009, for Highway District 12 was a little over $1 million. That covers materials expenses for seven counties: Letcher, Pike, Floyd, Knott, Martin, Johnson, and Lawrence.