A hard south wind blew snow across roadways causing traffic accidents across the region Sunday and made the day-after-Christmas homeward bound travel more difficult.
Sgt. Joe Knowski of the North Dakota Highway Patrol, said a vehicle rolled over Sunday about four miles east of Devils Lake on U.S. Highway 2, and a second vehicle drove into the ditch nearby not long after.
A three-vehicle crash slowed traffic on Interstate 29 at the high overpass near the Buxton, N.D., exit about 11:20 a.m. Sunday, about 20 miles south of Grand Forks.
But no injuries were reported, and the rollover vehicle was able to just drive on, surprising as that might seem, Knowski said.
"There are so many snowdrifts and they are hard drifts, not soft pillow drifts," he said Sunday night. "They are hard, rock-like and appear out of nowhere."
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Cold temperatures that moved from below zero to only about 10 above helped make the drifts icy.
Another unusual feature of Sunday's snow-drifting was that the south wind meant the driving lane of eastbound Highway 2, for example, was filling up with snow, leaving the passing lane open. "But people were in the driving lane," he said, causing problems.
State snowplows were out trying to keep the drifts knocked off the roads but couldn't keep up easily, Knowski said.
