Burst of snowfall covers Southcentral Alaska roads for commuters

Early morning snowfall slowed Anchorage drivers Thursday, and forecasters predicted more snow throughout the day.

Anchorage Police Department spokeswoman Anita Shell said officers had responded to 20 accidents, two involving injuries, and 16 vehicles in distress between 6 a.m. and noon Thursday.

One of the initial collisions, a two-vehicle crash on the inbound stretch of the Glenn Highway in the Ship Creek area just after 7 a.m., was quickly cleared from the road. Shell said another wreck, in South Anchorage at West Dimond Boulevard and Edinburgh Drive, left one person with leg injuries and a second with a bloody nose.

"Slow down and use caution," police wrote in an alert. "Visibility is limited."

National Weather Service meteorologist Luis Ingram said the agency's Anchorage office, near Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, had recorded 3.3 inches of snow between midnight and 6 a.m. Thursday. He said the snowfall was driven by a pattern moving into the Prince William Sound region, on the heels of cold air that's been building over much of Alaska this week.

[ Cold air mass covers Alaska and temperatures plummet to well below average ]

"We've got a weak system that's pushing up from the Kenai Peninsula — it's moving roughly northward, and so that's where all our precipitation is mainly coming from," Ingram said. "It's basically remnants of a system that originated in the Bering (Sea); as it pushed east into the Gulf (of Alaska), it basically collapsed into an area of low pressure."

Thursday's forecast in Anchorage calls for 1 to 3 more inches of snow accumulating during the day, with precipitation chances falling to 40 percent by Friday. In Wasilla the estimated snowfall range for Thursday is 2 to 4 inches, with a 20 percent chance of precipitation by Friday.

Ingram said Thursday morning that commuters could expect snowfall to resume later in the day.

"This current batch that's coming through will persist for one to two hours," Ingram said. "At the very least it will lighten up, and then we're looking for a redevelopment in the afternoon."

APD dispatchers said that on Wednesday between 6 p.m. and midnight, police reported three accidents with minor injuries, three more without injuries and four vehicles in distress.

That last total included a crash in which two vehicles struck four pedestrians near Bean's Café at 1101 E. Third Ave. at about 6 p.m. Wednesday. Police spoke with both drivers involved, who remained at the scene, and briefly closed roads in the area to investigate the crash.

[Anchorage police: Accident sends 4 pedestrians to the hospital, closes downtown roads ]

Ingram hoped motorists would drive for the day's conditions to avoid causing more collisions.

"Hopefully people take it slow today," Ingram said.