Injuries from Saturday’s ice storm

If you were on the roads on Saturday, you know…driving conditions were scary. With black ice coating the streets, sidewalks were no better. In fact, dozens of people went to the hospital with weather-related injuries.

Cement turned to a layer of ice. A frightening combination of drizzle and freezing temperatures iced over roads and sidewalks. Along the I-25 corridor, slick roads stalled traffic and caused accident after accident. People I talked to were blown away by this storm.

“You could barely walk, you had to hold onto a rail. I didn’t fall because I lived in Tahoe, I’ve lived in Alaska, but it was, I’ve had friends who were just falling all over the place. And it took me two hours to defrost my car,” said Colorado Springs resident Lenore Morales.

“Just walking I turned my ankle and then kind of did really careful and slow steps after that and even did a little bit of ice skating because it felt more safe than taking actual steps,” said Colorado Springs resident Frances Gomeztagle.

UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central treated at least 42 people this weekend for either falls or car accident-related injuries. Again, those are just the numbers at one hospital. Injuries ranged from fractures to dislocations, concussions to other head injuries. It was a mess.

“Every year we get something bad like this where we get one that’s slick and we just see a lot of people slipping and falling. Now unfortunately, people are driving intoxicated – especially on the holidays,” said Dr. Larry Cohen.

It’s relatively rare to see ice storms in southern Colorado, but here’s how they happen. Ice crystals that form in the upper levels of the atmosphere melt in a layer of above-freezing temperatures as they fall toward the ground. That precipitation then refreezes once it hits the surface which has a temperature at or below-freezing.

Southern Colorado tends to have colder temperatures at our higher elevations, so we usually see more snowstorms than freezing rain, making this weekend’s storm even more notable. We’ll keep you ahead of the next storms to impact southern Colorado.