PIKEVILLE, Ky. — The counties of Highway District 12 may experience hazardous weather this week. Freezing rain was predicted between midnight and daybreak today with rain continuing through the day. That rain may turn to freezing rain, causing black ice as temperatures drop during the night.

Sara George, Information Officer for the state highway district, said. “Of course the forecast doesn’t pin down exactly where the rain will freeze and where it will just be rain, so I suppose we should all be prepared for the worst and pray for the best. I would ask people to also be patient. We have almost 1900 road miles (X however many lanes each road has) to clear with 94 snow plows. Our crews work around the clock. They don’t slack. It just takes time.”

 Freezing rain caused multiple pileups in both Letcher and Johnson counties on Tuesday morning, although conditions remained mostly wet in the other five counties of the district, Pike, Floyd, Knott, Martin, and Lawrence.

 The most notable pileup was before around 7 a.m. on US 23 at Pound Gap near Jenkins. State highway crews could not get to the site because there were so many big trucks and other vehicles blocking the road. “They tried to get up the mountain and couldn’t,” said Billy Smallwood, Letcher superintendent, “so they just stopped wherever they were, in the middle of the road, in the slow lane, on the shoulder. We had to weave our way in and out of all the stalled vehicles to get to the top, but we  got it cleared pretty fast once we got there.”

The freezing rain didn’t hit Johnson County until later in the morning, after people were already out on the roads. For about an hour US 460 and US 23 in Johnson County shut down; both routes were impassable because of ice buildup. In fact, Keith Hill with Highway District 12’s section office at Staffordsville said almost every road in Johnson County was impassable for a while.

Temperatures should rise to the 30s today, the window during which folks might want to get supplies for the weekend, she said.

Weather on Thursday night could be rain, freezing rain, or snow. On Friday and Saturday the outlook appears to be snow to rain during daylight hours and rain to snow at night as temperatures fall.

 “Our crews are either on the road or on standby, depending on which county and what area of the county they cover,” George said. “We ask people to be sensible and stay off the roads, especially after dark, unless it’s a medical emergency. Even first responders were having a hard time this morning, and their vehicles and drivers are trained and equipped for just about anything. The average vehicle and driver are not.”