Motorists are being urged to watch out today for icy splotches on roads, the remnants of a holiday weekend ice storm.

For more than 30,000 S.C. utility customers, however, the lingering memory of that storm will be of lost power.

More than 7,100 SCE&G customers lost power late Saturday and Sunday in the storm, primarily due to ice-laden trees and limbs falling on power lines.

The utility reported scattered outages around the state. But the majority were in east Columbia and Lower Richland County, spokesman Brian Duncansaid.

Extra crews were called in to restore power. By Sunday evening, 3,000 SCE&G customers were without power. Most of the problems continued to be in east Columbia, Duncan said. SCE&G expected to have power restored to the majority of those customers Sunday night.

In the Pee Dee, 20,000 homes and businesses were without power at 5 p.m. Sunday in Florence, Darlington and Marlboro counties because of the storm, said a Progress Energy spokeswoman.

The company had no time estimate Sunday of how long it would take to restore power.

Pee Dee Electric Cooperative said about 2,000 of its customers, mostly in the Darlington and Florence areas, were still without power Sunday afternoon.

Elsewhere in South Carolina, Aiken Electric Cooperative reported several thousand of its customers were without power Sunday morning.

Those customers were primarily in the Windsor area of Aiken County and North in Orangeburg County, said Bill Inman, vice president for customer service. Circuits were restored by Sunday afternoon, he said, but reconnections were continuing.

Meanwhile, state highway crews hurried Sunday to clear leftover slush from the roads before nightfall’s freeze could create dangerously icy roads for this morning.

Most South Carolinians should awaken today to improved weather conditions -- cold but little ice.

That’s after expectations of a Christmas snow storm instead dealt sleet and cold rain to a major part of the state.

“Snow fell. Some of it just melted before hitting the ground,” said meteorologist Tim Hawks of the National Weather Service at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. “We thought we’d get more snow.”

A quarter- to a half-inch of sleet blanketed the Midlands on a line from Augusta to Columbia and Orangeburg to the Pee Dee. The S.C. coast got rain; the Upstate was spared, the Weather Service said.

The S.C. Highway Patrol reported numerous collisions, including more than 30 alone in the Midlands between 10 p.m. Saturday and midday Sunday. Most were fender benders or cars skidding off the road, said Lance Cpl. Josef Robinson.

“That’s what we mostly get in this area in this kind of weather,” Robinson said. He credited the transportation department with holding down the number of accidents by getting out early to put sand on roads.

Dozens of area churches also canceled services Sunday, holding down travel.