CMS: School is on for Thursday

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials made the announcement this afternoon that classes will resume Thursday morning.

CMS students have been out of school all week, following the early-week winter storm.

Students, parents and others on the roads early Thursday will have to deal with a bit of ice, however.

Wayne Jones, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Greer, S.C., said any slush or ice still on streets or sidewalks this evening will freeze overnight.

“Temperatures will drop into the 20’s, and there will be refreezing,” Jones said.

However, sunshine and milder conditions Thursday will melt any ice within a few hours of sunrise. High temperatures Thursday could reach 50 degrees.

The ice that coated side streets and sidewalks took a beating from the sun today. Temperatures rose into the low to mid 40’s across much of the area – the warmest since around midnight Saturday, when temperatures were in the upper 40’s before the winter storm arrived.

Sunshine and breezy conditions have melted much of the icepack, but some slush remains in less-heavily traveled streets and lanes.

Jones said Carolinas residents will have at least a few days of rest from wintry weather. He said a “zonal flow,” in which weather systems move from west to east, will dominate the Southeast through at least the early part of the weekend.

Another storm system is forecast to approach the Carolinas by Sunday, and some computer models indicate another cold-air damming event – the situation which helped create the sleet and freezing rain Sunday and Monday – could develop again next Monday.

“We’ve been looking at the computer models and discussing this, but it’s still too far away,” Jones said.

In the meantime, milder weather is in store for our area for several days.

“Temperatures will still be a bit below normal, but it will be milder than what we’ve been experiencing,” Jones said.

In many areas, life began returning to normal today.

Most of the area’s colleges and universities resumed their normal schedules, although Charlotte’s Johnson C. Smith University and Queens University, along with Belmont Abbey College in Gaston County, opened a few hours late. CPCC resumed classes at all of its campuses early this afternoon.

Most government offices also reopened today.

However, the City of Charlotte suspended trash pickup for another day. Trash collection resumes Thursday and Friday for residents who normally are serviced on those days.

Residents who missed trash pickup this week because of the bad weather will have to wait until next week. They will be permitted to leave bags of trash beside their rollout containers next week.

Across the Carolinas, work crews are battling to restore power to thousands who lost electricity Monday in an ice storm that affected a swath from Augusta, Ga., across the Columbia area, into eastern North Carolina.

Officials attribute seven deaths in North Carolina and six in South Carolina to the storm.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford declared a state of emergency.

About 90,000 customers remained without power early Wednesday afternoon in South Carolina. Utility companies have called in help from other states, but additional outages were reported today when gusty winds knocked down additional tree limbs onto power lines.

The number of power outages – about 200,000 at its peak – remains less than the 300,000 outages reported in the December 2002 ice storm. But some South Carolina residents compared the damage from Monday’s ice storm to that of Hurricane Hugo in 1988.

“Hurricane Hugo would be the only thing approaching this storm, in terms of power outages,” Columbia Mayor Bob Coble said. “We need to plan for days, not hours (of power being out) and plan accordingly ... We want to make sure people realize this is a very serious problem.”

Tuesday’s sunshine was a welcome sight for Blanche Bajer of Columbia, whose power has been out since Monday.

“The sun!” Bajer exclaimed, her hands clasped over her lips. “Oh, that’s the most beautiful thing.”

Bajer, 70, said she slept Monday night fully clothed, wearing a furry black cap and under piles of afghans knitted by her daughter. She did not go to a shelter because she has a dog and cat and wanted to stay in her home with the pets.

In eastern North Carolina, utility companies continued to make progress toward restoring power to the 50,000 customers who lost electricity during the storm. As of Wednesday afternoon, only a few thousand were still without power, mostly in the southeastern part of the state.

But in the northwestern N.C. mountains, a fresh snowstorm was the problem this afternoon.

Up to 3 inches of new snow fell this morning in the area from Madison to Avery counties, causing dangerous conditions on roads. The snow ended early this afternoon, but strong winds produced wind chills below zero.

The slippery roads are a big reason why the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools canceled classes today.

“We do a lot of traveling on neighborhood streets and on some fairly rural roads,” said Jerri Haigler, spokeswoman for CMS, which runs 1,200 buses a day. “Clearing the main streets is only part of the problem for us. We have to worry about the smaller and less-used streets, too.”

Charlotte officials and city council members defended the city’s approach to street-cleaning, which concentrates on thoroughfares and ignores minor roads.

City officials said it would cost too much – about $1.3 million in equipment and materials, to start service – for the once-a-year Southern ice storm.

“It comes up periodically,” said council member Nancy Carter, who represents east Charlotte. “I would say it’s statistically a lose-lose. The taxpayers would invest way too much money for a minimal amount of time and inconvenience.”

Jack Matthews of Charlotte said he had to burn two vacation days because his street in northeast Charlotte’s Newell community wasn’t cleared.

Matthews, 58, said trucks worked on Old Concord Road but didn’t make the turn into his neighborhood. “If they can get so close, why not just make a sweep down our road?”

Layton Lamb, the city’s street superintendent, said his drivers sometimes clear neighborhood streets in response to requests from the Charlotte Fire Department, Medic, and the Charlotte Area Transit System.

State crews sometimes reach subdivisions in the rural areas they cover, but they are lower on the priority list.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.