Four inches of snow Saturday, and the high winds that accompanied it, gave Emporia tow truck drivers plenty of action throughout the day.
The Emporia Police Department reported 13 traffic accidents — 12 non-injury accidents and one hit-and-run accident — between 10:13 a.m. and 11:51 p.m. Saturday. Three traffic hazards also were reported.
Kim Nelson, owner of the tow business behind K&S Eastside Conoco, said his towing service received “the whole spectrum” of calls, including accidents, unlocking calls and cars in ditches. Most of the accidents took place on the highway; K&S received just one call within the city.
“It seems like Saturday was the driving day, so there was an extraordinary amount of traffic,” Nelson said. “You’re talking two or three times increase in business.”
Nelson said the weather forecast didn’t really prepare his crew for Saturday’s business.
“I’d say it probably caught us by surprise, especially since the last storm was a bust,” he said. “You kind of (get) a little burnout on the weather forecasting. Because even this weather forecast was not even accurate. Remember, they forecast this one to start out as rain about midnight. And it just started snowing at about 10, 10:30 Saturday morning and went immediately into a hard snow.”
Williams Automotive saw a spike in business, too. Rex Williams, owner and manager, reported 73 calls for light-duty vehicles and 12 for semitrailers on Saturday and Sunday. He said Sunday afternoon that those numbers are “quite a bit more” than most weekends.
“We averaged five guys in the trucks, pretty much nonstop, for yesterday and today,” he said, “and we still have people out right now, doing all they can do. So we’ll have several more before the day’s over.”
The weather forecast was sufficient to prepare Williams’ business for how busy it would be, he said.
“We watch it pretty close on that, and (we had) more people than we typically have on call,” he said. “Knowing that we were going to have something like that, we put extra people on, and extra dispatchers and what have you, so we could handle the volume the best we could.”
On Sunday, the National Weather Service in Topeka forecasted a partly cloudy evening for tonight with a low of 21, with south winds between 5 and 15 mph. Christmas Day is forecast to be partly sunny with a high of 36, but with a 30 percent chance of snow Tuesday night.