Wednesday morning, Jan. 6, Wright County residents woke up to a sheet of ice covering the roads, worse in some places than others. Regardless, it left numerous drivers in the ditch (over half a dozen that were reported and many more that were not), and area schools cancelling classes for the day.
There was some question, since the Eagle Grove Area School District and the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows School District (C-G-D) share a transportation Director, why C-G-D cancelled school and Eagle Grove did not. According to Eagle Grove Superintendent Jess Toliver, there were three separate issues that lead up to the decision. First, Clarion had a lot more rain and ice than Eagle Grove did. Second, the G-G-D covers around 367 square miles where the Eagle Grove district only covers around 150 square miles.
“Their busses have to travel a lot further to carry kids to school. Their district is actually about 45 miles across where ours is about 15 miles,” said Toliver.
The third factor that played into the decision for C-G-D to cancel school was that they had a two hour early out on Wednesday for Professional Development. Eagle Grove did not. If C-G-D brought kids in two hours late, they would have started at 10:30 a.m. and released at 1 pm.which meant they would have only been in school for two-and-a-half hours…and that would include a lunch break. It simply didn’t make sense to put the drivers and children at risk when roads were worse and the school day would have been so short.
“Although we share a transportation director and often make similar calls, our districts are also very different in size and location; and weather can vary greatly between them,” said Toliver. “For the weather that came in, the traveling public was taken off guard,” said Wright County Engineer Adam Clemons. “The weather and temperature changed so quickly that people weren’t ready for it.”
He continued saying that between 3 – 4 am., it was fine, and just snowing by5 a.m.. But in the course of an hour, there was a major weather change – by 6, it was raining.
“It was like a skating rink for a while. We got material out as quickly as possible and within two-and-a-half hours, we were good,” he said.
According to Eagle Grove Chief of Police Ray Beltran, the Eagle Grove Police Department did not receive any calls for help from stranded motorists or those who went into the ditch. However, he did offer some words of advice for the next winter weather system that moves through.
“I would tell people to just drive slow and drive with caution,” he said.
