The winter that just won’t seem to go away belted the region again late Sunday evening and into the morning Monday, this time with heavy rains that later turned to sleet and ice and finally snow and bitter cold temperatures.

The system all but brought the region to a standstill by early Monday morning, leaving area roads covered by a thick layer of ice that resulted from the sudden drop in temperatures that followed an extended period of heavy rains Sunday.

Many businesses and local government agencies did not open Monday morning at regular times, and while most were eventually open by mid-day, some remained closed all day Monday.

Clinton County Schools were closed on Monday and Tuesday as well, making it the 12th and 13th days students had missed classes this school year due to weather related conditions.

According to the Kentucky Mesonet, the weather recording station operated by Western Kentucky University just north of Albany, 1.12 inches of precipitation, mostly in the form of rain, was measured at the station on Sunday, and another .51 inches of precipitation was measured on Monday.

Temperatures during those two days that saw the drastic change in the area, ranged from a high on Sunday of 63 degrees, to a Monday evening low recording of 12 degrees.

City, county and state highway crews were out in force Monday morning, scraping roads and spreading salt in an effort to make travel for local motorists safer.

Several local businesses were utilizing private crews to scrape and treat parking lots on Monday to remove the snow and ice and make it safer for customers wanting to do business throughout the day.

Across the Lake Cumberland region, District 8 Kentucky Transportation crews, which includes Clinton County in the 10-county area, reported in a mid-day press release that crews were continuing to use snow plows and “light salt applications” in an effort to make routes passable.

Joy Bullock, spokesperson for South Kentucky RECC, reported to the Clinton County News in a press release Monday morning, that at the peak of the ice damage to electrical lines, there were some 4,000 customers affected by the outages.

In Clinton County, Bullock told the Clinton County News that approximately 132 SKRECC members had been affected by overnight outages due to the ice storm and winds.

Bullock further noted that at one time or another, all of the 13 counties served by SKRECC had experienced outages due to the winter storm that moved through the region.

The winter storm also played havoc with plans for the scheduled 4th Region Basketball Tournaments that were to be held this week, originally slated to get underway Monday night with girls’ varsity play.

Both tournament starting days and schedules were altered after Sunday night’s winter storm moved through the area. A separate article can be found beginning on page 1 with the details of the 4th Region Basketball Tournament.

A front bringing a warming trend was expected to move into the region late Tuesday, with a predicted high temperature in the upper 40s for Wednesday and Thursday, and lows that would stay above the freezing mark.