Albany and Clinton County residents joined the population of most of the northeastern section of the United States in suffering through one of the worst winter snow storms in history.

The system, which moved through Clinton County late Thursday evening and throughout the entire day Friday and into Saturday morning, left local residents stranded in their homes while emergency and utility crews were out working throughout the event.

In Clinton County, reports of as much as 14 inches of snow were reported in some areas while the most common reported depth being eight to 10 inches.

However the dry snow coupled with brisk winds throughout the event last weekend also caused additional local problems with snow drifts that piled up in roadways and driveways that were as high as three feet tall.

While there were reports of minor property damage as well as several broken trees across the county as a result of the snow storm, certainly the single largest property loss occurred in northern Clinton County at Grider Hill Dock on Lake Cumberland.

At that marina, the heavy ice and snow forced several boat slip structures to break, topple and sink from one end of the marina complex to the other.

Many of those structures had privately owned boats of all sizes under them.

As bad as it was in Albany and Clinton County during last weekend’s snowstorm, this area was actually considerably lucky in comparison with towns and communities just to our north.

The storm followed a path that saw the worst of the storm’s snowfall north of Albany and Clinton County that included a path that saw the storm moving east across the bluegrass section of Kentucky.

At one point when Albany and Clinton County had experienced about six inches of snow on the ground, reports from neighboring Russell County were that nearly 12 inches were already on the ground there, and those totals and resulting conditions worsened as the reports came in from counties to the north and east of Clinton County.

In Rockcastle County, again to the northeast of Clinton County, traffic on I75 came to s standstill when several tractor trailer trucks were unable to get up the steep inclines in that area and traffic was stopped on both sides of the Interstate in that region.

As the situation worsened Friday afternoon, the backup on the interstate eventually stretched for 31 miles, with motorists remaining stranded throughout the night and well into the next day before the accidents causing the shutdown were cleared by emergency crews and traffic was allowed to begin moving again.

As the storm continued to dump extreme amounts of snow on central Kentucky, Governor Matt Bevin declared a state of emergency statewide shortly after 12:00 noon Friday.

“My primary concern is safety. By declaring a state emergency we are giving emergency management the options they need to pro-actively respond to local needs. I thank all of the officials working hard to keep people safe and commerce flowing,” said Governor Matt Bevin. “We urge all citizens to remain at home and stay off of the roads allowing emergency services the opportunity to keep the roadways safe.”

Of course the heavy snowfall in Albany and Clinton County and across the entire region, quickly adversely impacted the road conditions and for many, the availability of electricity.

Both the roads and power service impact from the storm was worsened by the fact that prior to Friday’s storm arrival, a brief period of sleet and rain had frozen and left a thin layer of ice on roads and power lines, and was followed by about four inches of snow prior to the arrival of the second band of snowfall.

State, county and city crews were out immediately trying to keep up with the large amounts of snowfall that was blanketing the area.

Travel on local roads became nearly impossible for most motorists and even difficult for emergency crews, both those working on roads and crews from South Kentucky RECC who were working feverishly to keep up with downed power lines and broken service poles.

Clinton County Judge/Executive Richard Armstrong told the Clinton County News on Monday morning that this 2016 winter experience for his office and the county road crews had certainly been much worse than the experience they went through last winter during his first year in office.

“I know there have been complaints from people who think we have missed them, but the county guys have been out non-stop since this thing began and I certainly want to commend them on the job they’ve done,”Armstrong said Monday morning as he watched members of one county crew clear a section of Spring Street and the adjacent parking lot to the Clinton County Community Center. “I’ve been out working right along beside them through this whole thing, and it’s been tough on them.”

Armstrong noted that he realized that some county residents felt as if the county had not reacted as soon as they could to get all of the county roads cleared, but he assured the public that was simply not the case.

He said that the heavy snowfall made working conditions for the road crew dangerous and at one point, a county truck slipped off the roadway and became partially overturned in a ditch.

Although there were luckily no injuries involved in that mishap, Armstrong explained that situations such as that one further hampered the road crew’s ability to clear county roads, causing additional delays while equipment was brought in to upright the vehicle.

“We’ve only got five trucks and we’re working to clear over 600 miles of roads,” Armstrong said. “We also hired some private trucks and tractors with snow blades to help us get the roads cleared.”

Armstrong added that while he always expected to get some complaints during a major event such as this, he also wanted to thank most of the general public for being so understanding.

He also expressed his gratitude for the way that Kentucky Department of Transportation personnel from the Clinton County crew had worked along with his county crew to expedite the effort to clear roads throughout the county.

“They have been fantastic to work with through this and I certainly want to thank them and commend them on the job they have performed during this storm,”Armstrong said.

Many in Clinton County were without power for varied lengths of time during the weekend storm, some for just a few minutes while others were without power for several hours.

Joy Bullock, the public relations spokesperson for South Kentucky RECC, told the Clinton County News on Monday that during the span of the storm, across the entire area the number of customers that at one time or another had been without power at the peak outage was 8,000.

She noted, however, that for a time when Kentucky Utilities was also out, there were 15,000 across the system without power when a total loss of transmission to McCreary County was experienced.

Although a number of customers experienced outages in Clinton County, the bulk of the number of customers without power during the storm were those in Wayne and Russell counties, with much of that damage being blamed on the ice that fell in the area just prior to the heavy snowfall that came later Friday.

The major source of outages was tree limbs on power lines, and SKRECC V-P of Engineering Dennis Holt says restoration efforts were greatly hampered by weather and road conditions.

“The outages were extremely widespread across our entire system, and crews began working from the time they could get out early Friday morning (January 22), and continued working until we got virtually everyone restored on Tuesday (January 26). SKRECC is still working cleanup on a few individual outages. We had several contract crews to help with restoration, as well as crews from sister co-ops across the state.

“We had difficulty, because of the continued snow and inability of road crews to plow roads, to get from outage to outage, which slow us down tremendously. For quite a while, it seemed that we could not make any progress. Every time we would get a large number restored, we would have several more outages reported, due to falling tree limbs on lines.”

The damage to the boat slip structures at Grider Hill Dock was extremely tragic and wide-spread across the entire facility, with the fallen structures causing damage to a host of runabouts, pontoon and houseboats that were housed there.

Grider Hill General Manager Elizabeth Sasser told the Clinton County News on Tuesday morning that she was literally overwhelmed with what she and her crew had been through during the storm and the tremendous amount of damage the facility had experienced.

“We have several covered slips that have collapsed and boats are sinking – it’s just a mess,” Sasser said in a brief telephone interview. “Of course most of our customers live away from here and they are all calling and concerned.”

In a Facebook notice to the Grider Hill Marina customers, owner Jim Figuerado said Sunday that at the time, roofs on 11 slip structures had collapsed, noting that additional structures at that time were still under extreme stress.

Sasser further noted that although the crews were no where near finished with damage assessment estimates, she was already making steps toward getting things cleaned up and rebuilt as quickly as possible, with just three or four months between now and the start of the 2016 tourism season.

“I’m waiting on insurance adjusters now, I’m waiting on people from the Corps (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) and I’m actually already meeting with our builders to talk to them about beginning the process of rebuilding and getting back up and running,” Sasser said.

Severe damage to slip units were also reported in a similar fashion at several other docks on Lake Cumberland, including State Dock and Resort, Jamestown Dock, Burnside Dock and Lee’s Ford Marina.

As the old saying goes – “If you don’t like the weather in southern, Kentucky, stick around, it’ll change” – and that was certainly the case as the new work week got underway Monday.

After an overnight low Saturday night and Sunday morning of 3.7 degrees, Albany saw a high just 36 hours later on Monday afternoon of 51 degrees, according to the local Kentucky Mesonet weather monitoring station located near the Twin Lakes Wellness Center.

On Monday, additional road clearing efforts and storm damage cleanup was helped by a drastic turn in the weather, but many side roads still had some iced-over spots where little or no sun reaches them.

Clinton County schools were canceled last Friday, and remained closed on Monday and Tuesday of this week. No decision about students and staff returning to classes on Wednesday had been made at press time.

Last weekends “Snowmageddon’ event left Albany and Clinton County sitting under more than a foot of snow and ice, providing varying experiences for everyone. Views ranged from beautiful rural snow scenes, such as the one above from the Snow Community of Clinton County, to the horrid damages that occurred at Grider Hill Dock on Lake Cumberland where slip structures came crashing down on private boats shown in the bottom photo.

For some, like Clinton County Maintence Crew member Ricky Brown, Friday’s snowfall meant running this snow thrower around the courthouse parking lot. For others, like Joanna Gibson and her niece Lauren Winningham, it meant a day of sledding fun.

The ice that fell prior to Friday’s snow arrival made for some photo opportunities, but further hampered driving and road clearing efforts.

Drifts from the blowing snow were measured from 18 inches to well over 24 inches in some reports.