Flurries, frozen rain covered parish Tuesday
Published 4:57 am Friday, January 19, 2018
Washington Parish got its second visit from “old man winter” in just a little more than a month, after the area was blanketed in snow following flurries and frozen rain on Tuesday evening.
Snow also previously blanketed the region on Friday, Dec. 8, 2017. An elderly visitor to The Daily News remarked that he could not remember a previous time where there were two snowfalls so close together.
Officials commented on the final results of this week’s winter precipitation.
The Slidell post of the National Weather Service does not include Franklinton in its coverage area, but the agency did have the temperatures for Bogalusa during the current frigid conditions. A representative said the temperatures dipped to 14 degrees on Wednesday morning and to 18 degrees on Thursday morning. Factor in the wind, and the “feels-like” temperature was only 2 degrees on Wednesday, the official said.
By Thursday, when schools across Washington Parish were still closed, the wind chill factor in Bogalusa and Franklinton was reportedly 13 degrees.
Tommy Thiebaud, the director of the Washington Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said that “numerous people were running off the roads” on Wednesday, but entire roads were ever closed to traffic.
“Sections of roads were closed while we got a wrecker in,” he said. “But if we had closed any roads, we would have had to close all of them.”
Thiebaud said he was not aware of any widespread water or energy issues.
Meanwhile, Bogalusa Director of Public Works James Hall said his department decided to work on Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and that office personnel worked from noon to 4 p.m. Hall’s department was back to a normal schedule on Thursday.
“The city itself doesn’t have any water issues, so far,” Hall continued. “But we’ve been very busy turning water off to individuals with busted water pipes.”
Hall also said his crews were sanding roads and places of businesses, as of early Thursday morning.