Some Warren County residents woke up Friday to find their homes and cars covered with winter foam.

According to the National Weather Service office in Jackson, 1 inch of snow was reported in downtown Vicksburg, but meteorologist Thomas Winesett said the total amount in the area could vary depending on where someone lived in Vicksburg and Warren County.

He said there was a “really sharp cutoff where it snowed a lot and where it didn’t.”

“Looking at our data, it looks like it (the snow) might have cut right through Warren County, so the northern part didn’t get as much as the southern part. If you were in the northern part of the county, you didn’t see much. But the southern part of the county got a decent snow.”

The snow ended by early afternoon, but Winesett said temperature were predicted to drop into the low 20s Friday night with lows of about 22 to 24 degrees.

“So if there’s any water left on the road that doesn’t evaporate during the day, it’s going to freeze right up into black ice.”

“We didn’t expect it, but we’re lucky it wasn’t more than it was,” Warren County Emergency Management Director John Elfer said. “We had no reports of problems.”

Most of the severe snowfall, he said, was south and east of Warren County.

While the surprise snowfall caught people off guard, it did not force area school officials to cancel classes.

After receiving the all clear from Warren County Emergency Management that the roads were safe, the Vicksburg Warren School District and Vicksburg Catholic schools made the call to operate as normal Friday despite the winter weather that rolled in overnight.

“Our buses roll out at 5:30 a.m. so any decisions we make for delayed start or not to start school at all is made around 5 a.m.,” superintendent Chad Shealy said. “We talked to John Elfer and the sheriff’s department, and all our decisions are made on the road not necessarily what’s on the ground. All the roads were clear and emergency management made the decision that everything looks safe.”

St. Aloysius principal Buddy Strickland said they notified parents that schools would be open, but gave parents they option of determining if the felt it was safe for their students to travel.

“We looked at it, we talked to emergency management twice this morning and they said the roads were fine,” Strickland said. “We got out and rode before we made the decision and they were.”

Strickland said they had about 50 percent attendance Friday morning. Porter’s Chapel Academy was the only county school to close Friday.

The snow and the cold temperatures did not adversely affect traffic, local officials said.

Deputy Vicksburg police chief Bobby Stewart said no accidents or road closures were reported in the city.

“All the bridges are passable,” he said. “We sanded some bridges this morning and sanded the higher bridges on Mission (66) and North Frontage Road.”

Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said no problems were reported in the county.

“We had no problems with roads, no trees down and we had no wrecks,” he said. “I kept some people over from the night shift for a few hours just in case we had problems on the road, but we had nothing. Most of the roads are starting to dry up.”

Entergy customer service representative Shelia McKinnis said the utility had no major outages.

“We had two customers call us to come out; we were lucky,” she said.