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SALT LAKE CITY -- A fast-moving storm brought enough snow, rain and cold to cause serious problems on roads along the Wasatch Front Monday morning.
Utah Highway Patrol troopers say they responded to 97 accidents in Utah, Salt Lake and Davis counties beginning at 5 a.m. and continuing through the morning commute. None of them included life-threatening injuries. At one point, troopers had more than 25 crashes to respond to, all of them related to icy roads and poor driving conditions.
Interstate 15 in the Salt Lake Valley was a major trouble spot all morning. At its worst, motorists could not drive more than half a mile without passing a crash.
Teresa Henderson was riding in an SUV that spun out on I-15. "It's a mess. It's just ice," she said. "It's like ice skating."
Motorist Melissa Bodtcher also had trouble.
"It's just really slippery," she told KSL. "My car's not very good in the snow."
Another driver, Dan Matta, made it off the freeway without incident. "You feel good about your own driving; It's the other guy that's in a little bit of a hurry," he said.
By 6 a.m. troopers had already been called to at least 10 weather-related crashes, slide-offs and vehicles stuck in the middle of I-15.
Slow down. It's as simple as that.
–UHP Trooper Lawrence Hopper
By 8 a.m. that number increased to 61 in Salt Lake County alone, including one on I-15 at 900 South.
UHP Sr. Trooper Standford Locher explained, "The car was going too fast for conditions, slid out of control, hit the Jersey barrier, spun back into traffic and then the green car hit it."
About half a mile south of that, another crash involved three cars and an empty bus.
Matthew Skaggs' car got the worst of the damage. He was trying to pass the bus when he realized a car had spun out and hit the cement barrier, coming to a stop in his lane.
"There was nowhere to go," he said. "It was either left into a car next to me or right into a bus. So I decided to do neither and put my brakes on. I slid into the bus and bounced off of it right into the median."
Skaggs says he was traveling less than 55 miles per hour when he tried to stop his car. While that was less than the speed limit, troopers say it wasn't slow enough for the conditions.
Trooper Lawrence Hopper said, "They see that it's snowing. They see that the roads are going to be bad. They just need to slow their speeds down and give themselves following distance. Then again, scan the traffic and if you see something up ahead, give yourself time to slow down."
In places there was very little snow on the pavement, but temperatures were cold enough to freeze any moisture on the road.
Troopers warn drivers that Monday afternoon's commute could be similar to Monday morning's.
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Story compiled with information from Andrew Adams and Shara Park.
