Rain in western Arkansas quickly froze on roadways and overpasses Wednesday, and temperatures hovered just below freezing, forcing highway crews to scramble to treat icy conditions that were expected to linger into this morning.

State police reported dozens of accidents on Interstates 30 and 40, and city, and county authorities said numerous cars were sliding off roads Wednesday.

“We’re seeing tons of wrecks,” said Crystal Dickerson, an administrative assistant for the city of De Queen.

“It was misting rain this morning, and everything suddenly turned to ice,” she said Wednesday.

In Pope County, a Dover School District school bus slid off Linker Mountain Road about 12:45 p.m. Wednesday, ending up sideways in a ditch, said Marsha Laffoon, an assistant to the superintendent. There were seven children on the bus, but no one was injured, she said.

“We sent a ‘rescue’ bus, and everyone was fine,” she said. “We have a [registered nurse] who is a bus driver. She checked each one out.”

The Dover School District had closed at noon because of the icy conditions, she said. “The weather came in so much faster than we expected,” Laffoon said.

Schools across Northwest Arkansas closed Wednesday - some for a third day in a row. Many in central Arkansas canceled after-school events.

The freezing rain caught many off guard.

“We were not expecting [the ice] until 6 p.m.,” Altus Mayor Larry Stacy said. “It started as a light, misty rain, and the temperature dipped to 27 degrees, and just like that the roads were sheets of ice.”

The National Weather Service issued winter-weather advisories for all but four southwestern Arkansas counties Wednesday. The advisory called for sleet and freezing rain through noon today.

The rain began early Wednesday, as a warm, upper-level system brought moisture into the state from the southwest, said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Teague of Tulsa. Because of the extreme cold in Arkansas earlier this week, the rain froze on contact with surfaces.

Teague said he expected Northwest Arkansas to get up to a tenth of an inch of ice.

“The temperatures are right at freezing,” he said. “It won’t be a lot of ice, but it’ll be enough to impact travel.”

The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department began treating Northwest Arkansas roads with liquid calcium chloride and sand on major roadways like interstates, U.S. 71 and U.S. 64, and Arkansas 59 and 22, District Engineer Chad Adams said.

Drivers of the trucks treating the roadways had a difficult time Wednesday because motorists caught by surprise by the slick conditions were moving slowly on the highways.

“The trucks are out,” Adams said “It’s just getting through the traffic that’s the hard part.”

In central Arkansas, the Highway Department began treating roadways as sleet fell, spokesman Danny Straessle said. The precipitation began as rain, so crews couldn’t pre-treat roads because the chemicals would have quickly washed off, he said.

“It came in much quicker and more fervently than we anticipated,” he said of the freezing conditions. “We are addressing it, and the worst is yet to come precipitation-wise.”

Straessle said over that the past 10 years, the Highway Department has spent an average of $6.2 million a year on winter-weather operations. He didn’t have recent figures for chemicals, equipment or manpower, but said crews have worked on clearing roadways three times so far this winter.

“The cost is part of our highway maintenance expenses,” Straessle said. “There’s no line-item budget for removing frozen precipitation. It’s all part of maintenance.

“There is no danger of being over budget,” he said. “It will be done.”

Ice on some roads melted as temperatures rose in the afternoon. However, Adams said, he expected roads to refreeze overnight, and he cautioned drivers on secondary highways to drive carefully because the department’s trucks would not have a chance to treat them.

East of Bloomer, four people were injured in an accident on Arkansas 22, Sebastian County Department of Emergency Management Coordinator Jeff Turner said.

“We had a drizzle,” Jeff Dingman, a Fort Smith deputy city administrator, said Wednesday afternoon. “Then it suddenly seemed to be freezing on roads and sidewalks. It’s unusual.”

Crawford County Department of Emergency Management Coordinator Dennis Gilstrap sat with several motorists for hours Wednesday after their vehicles slid off a sharp curve on Arkansas 348 near the rural Figure Five area. He said no one was hurt, but people were stranded and were waiting for sand trucks and tow trucks to reach them.

Franklin County was another particularly slick area. A tractor-trailer blocked eastbound traffic on Interstate 40 near Ozark for more than two hours after it jackknifed on the ice. And on U.S. 64, also near Ozark, an Altus sanding truck overturned on a steep hill Wednesday morning scattering sand, Stacy said. The truck driver was not injured, the mayor said.

In central Arkansas, state police reported at least 10 accidents Wednesday morning on Interstate 30 in Saline County, spokesman Bill Sadler said. All were because of ice on bridges at mile markers 114 and 116 in Benton and at mile marker 121 in Bryant.

The Highway Department’s website showed traffic slowed or stopped at midmorning on Interstate 30 in both directions in that area. Traffic also was affected on U.S. 70, said David Nilles, a department spokesman.

Conditions worsened quickly because of two days of single-digit temperatures in the state, said National Weather Service meteorologist Tabitha Clarke of North Little Rock.

An arctic air mass brought intense cold to the state. On Tuesday, Lead Hill reported a minus-4-degree reading, and Hardy saw a temperature of minus-2 degrees. Although temperatures began slowly rising Tuesday, it wasn’t fast enough, she said.

“If all this was just rain, it would be no big deal,” Clarke said. “We wouldn’t be looking at heavy amounts. But because it was so cold already, everything is vulnerable to freezing. It was in the 40s and 50s [Tuesday], but because the ground was frozen, this caused the bigger issues.” Information for this article was contributed by Noel E. Oman of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/09/2014