Residents are waking up to snow on Thursday morning after Winter Storm Grayson moved through North Carolina late Wednesday night.

While the snow may look nice, it is leaving behind hazardous conditions.

“Between about 7 and 10 o’clock last night, things really got hairy around here,” Chapel Hill Fire chief Matt Sullivan said during a 6:30 a.m. Thursday appearance on the Ron Stutts Show on WCHL.

“Really thankful that overnight we didn’t have a lot of people get hurt,” Sullivan said.

But no major injuries, the fire chief said, does not mean everything went smoothly. Sullivan said the town is working around many abandoned vehicles from Wednesday night.

“As they go back this morning and try to pick up their cars, we encourage them to do so safely,” Sullivan said. “And as soon as they can do so safely, to get them out of the major thoroughfares. Which will allow us to assist with cleanup and take away some of the traffic hazards.”

Thursday’s forecast calls for sunny skies but temperatures are not expected to rise above freezing.

“it’s going to stay cold,” Sullivan said, “which is going to complicate our cleanup efforts.”

Sullivan asked residents to stay off of roadways, if possible.

“If you can stay home,” Sullivan said, “please do stay home.”

He added that some drivers on Thursday morning were not heeding advice.

“You wouldn’t know there’s ice on the road the way some of these drivers are driving, and that’s treacherous,” Sullivan said. “And then we expect overnight that whatever doesn’t evaporate is going to freeze back up and create additional road conditions overnight that’ll be dangerous.”

The storm caused local schools to close for Thursday. Nearly 2,000 Hillsborough residents were without power on Wednesday night, but Duke Energy is not reporting any outages in Orange County as of Thursday morning.

Photo via Town of Chapel Hill

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