By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette

Saturday, March 8, 2008, 11 a.m. -- Blowing, drifting snow choked area roadways and created white-out conditions at times that left extremely hazardous road conditions and nu numerous non-injury accidents and reports of vehicles sliding off roadways.

The National Weather Service reports the county received about 8 inches of snow since the flakes began falling yesterday. The high winds that accompanied the snow overnight created deep drifts and made it difficult to accurate measure total accumulation.

Local police and wrecker drivers were overwhelmed by the numerous cars off the road and non-injury accidents. By mid-afternoon Friday, the Nelson County Sheriff's Office was only responding to emergency situations and injury accidents due to the high number of accident calls. According to Nelson County Dispatch, some wrecker services that had been running hard all night were refusing to take additional runs when called by the dispatcher.

Humvees provided by the Kentucky National Guard are being used this morning to help get to people who were snowbound. County trucks with snow plows have just completed clearing Barnes Road, Wheeler and Old Airport Road.

Streets in Bardstown were still slick and hazardous this morning. At about 10:30 a.m., Nelson County Dispatch reported that a vehicle slid off country club hill on East Stephen Foster, narrowly avoiding crashing down into the ravine below.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, sheriff's deputies on their way to accident calls noted that a number of people were resorting to 4-wheeler ATVs to get to the Wal-Mart Supercenter for supplies. At about 3:30 a.m., officers investigated a call that someone was cutting doughnuts on the soccer fields at Dean Watts Park.

Salt River Electric crews were out working to restore power outages Saturday morning throughout their service area. Their efforts were slowed by the drifts and blowing snow.