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Jed Boal and Shelley Osterloh ReportingA slow-moving storm drops snow throughout the Wasatch Front.
Up in Summit County, it was a blizzard much of the evening. While the storm didn't make much of a mess of the roads in the Salt Lake Valley, try telling that to anyone who drove up to Park City or Heber tonight.
White-out conditions were so bad on I-80 and U.S. 40 this evening, troopers closed the highways while the blizzard blew through.
Many cars slid off the roads, plows struggled to clear the surface during the brunt of the snowfall. One of our photographers drove up there to shoot video of the conditions. He ended up hunkering down in Kimball Junction while it went through.
Traffic camera pictures from earlier in the evening show traffic at a standstill at Jeremy Ranch. And closer to Park City at Olympic Park, the snow blew horizontally most of the evening.
"I'm so sick of snow I could die," said one Summit County dispatcher, who declined to give her name to The Associated Press.
Salt Lake County's Big and Little Cottonwood canyons also saw significant snowfall, but stayed open through the day with only minor traffic problems, dispatchers said.
"I'm kind of impressed, people were very smart," the county's overnight dispatch supervisor said, also declining to give her name.
Despite slick, slushy roads accidents from Logan to Cedar City were limited to minor fender benders, dispatchers reported. No serious injuries were reported and slide-offs seemed to be the most frequent traffic mishap.
The snow began falling along the Wasatch Front this afternoon. The storm delayed students in the Wasatch School District from going home. We got a call that conditions on Highway 40 were so bad, students at Midway Elementary had to ride out the storm at school. About 5:00 officials told us all of the students had been allowed to leave.
People who played in the mountains told us it snowed all day.
Derrick Halls/Snowboarder: "About a foot of powder. Towards the end of the day, there was about a foot of new snow."
Alta led the snowfall totals with 11.5 inches in a 24 hour period that ended about 7:30 p.m. Second was Park City with 9 inches.
At the Utah Department of Transportation, meteorologists, traffic engineers and road crews monitor the storm so they can keep our roads clear.
Ralph Patterson/ Weather Operations Manager, Utah Dept. of Transportation: "So sometimes two to four inches of snow equates to wet roads, no big deal. Sometimes a quarter inch of snow is a major disaster because it's sticking to the ground or has some ice on it or something."
State plows hit the roads ready with a stockpile of 245-thousand tons of salt.
The Utah Department of Transportation has more than 300 weather and traffic cameras around the state and crews at the Traffic Center are monitoring them to find out where plows are needed.
Bryan Chamberlain, Traffic Operations Engineer, Utah Dept. of Transportation: "We watch the storms and if we've got one part of the state that's going to get hit hard and the other part of the state isn't, we'll do what we can to shift resources if we need to. We try to look at it on a state-wide basis and see where we need our resources most."
If you have be out on the roads tonight, you may want to call UDOTs automated Road condition line -- that number is 511. Just tell them where you are driving and you can get the latest road conditions.
Morning commuters faced rain in the valleys and some snow in Parley's Canyon and higher elevations, but mostly just wet conditions.
This storm isn't predicted to end until Wednesday morning.
Drivers traveling on Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon roads are required to have 4 wheel drive or chains on their tires.
Storm History
The first big snow storm was bound to hit around Thanksgiving. Each of the last few years, the first winter storm that packed a wallop for the valleys arrived in the last week of November.
A year ago, November 26th, a storm snarled traffic and plenty of cars got banged up. In Farmington, ten cars drove into a chain reaction crash on I-15.
On this date two years ago, wet and snowy roads contributed to a number of fatal crashes during the long holiday weekend, including a triple-fatal. Icey roads kept the plows busy, and slide-offs kept Highway Patrol on the run.
Three years ago, the first big storm arrived a little earlier.. November 22nd. That storm came in with a vengeance. A rapid drop in temperatures quickly glazed the roads with ice and salt did little to help. Nearly 300 crashes were reported on the highways. One UHP sergeant called it as bad as it gets.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
