A wind chill advisory and a hard freeze warning are in effect tonight as the temperature will fall to near 10 degrees tomorrow morning.
As much as 2 inches of freezing rain, sleet and snow fell on Newton County Monday.
A hard freeze warning means that temperatures will fall to between 5 and 15 degrees, and a wind chill advisory means that wind chill temperatures will fall to between -5 and 5 degrees.
With the extreme temperatures, Newton County EMA director Robbie Richardson said that work crews with the cities, county, Mississippi Department of Transportation and the power companies have all shut down work for the night and will resume as soon as possible Tuesday.
“The conditions have just gotten too dangerous for the crews to work,” Richardson said. “They are concerned that trees are going to fall on them while they are working. They will start back in the morning.”
Richardson said that any calls for downed trees on roads will not be answered until the morning. He also said the Newton County Courthouse will be shut down until 10 a.m. tomorrow.
“Everything on the roads are frozen solid,” Richardson said. “No one needs to be out there except for police and other essential personnel. And really even then, they really shouldn’t be out there, but the police have to respond to calls. But we just don’t need anyone out there right now.”
As of 6 p.m., there were about 5,000 power outages in Newton County with Southern Pine having the majority of those outages.
The only damage that Richardson was aware of was a large tree limb falling on a house and causing damage. There haven’t been any serious crashes due to the ice. He said it’s been mostly people sliding off the road and getting stuck in a ditch.
