Shown here is a sport utility vehicle that crashed into the front of Brook Lawn Farm Market on Wednesday, punching a large hole in the Lititz Pike stand.
Emergency responders are at the scene of an accident on Route 30 near the Route 23 exit ramp. The accident was one of many that made for slow going Wednesday.
Vehicles flipped, rammed median strips, crashed into buildings, smacked each other and slid off highways early Wednesday, as a powdery snow slicked county roads.
Traffic was backed up for several miles and several hours on two major highways, Route 283 and Route 30, snarling traffic and steaming commuters.
And the ugliness could continue. More snow is predicted to fall late tonight, just in time for Friday's rush hour.
Fortunately, no one suffered major injuries in any of Wednesday's major accidents reported in East Hempfield and Manheim townships.
Scores of fender-benders occurred elsewhere. At 7 a.m., emergency dispatchers were dealing with 22 accidents from Penn to West Lampeter townships.
Several motorists were cited for driving at an unsafe speed after the crashes.
Manheim Township police Sgt. Robert Baldwin said that after 30 years of police work he's noticed a common factor in snow-related accidents.
"If you get up and it's been snowing all night and there are 6 inches on the ground, people realize they have to slow down," he said, which leads to fewer accidents.
"But when people get up and it's just started to snow, or it's not snowing until they get on the street, they don't adjust their speed. … They don't slow down. They just tend to keep going at normal speed and get in crashes."
The lesson: Stay alert to changing conditions and drive accordingly.
Four accidents occurred between 6:30 and 9 a.m. Wednesday on just one stretch of highway: eastbound Route 283 between State Road and Rohrerstown Road, in East Hempfield Township, Officer Kevin Waltz said.
The accidents involved two flipped vehicles, a truck tractor that hit a guard rail and a car that ran into the back of a pickup truck.
A car also slid off Route 30 westbound between Running Pump and Centerville roads in East Hempfield. Another car crashed into a house at Elmwood and Naomi avenues, just off Harrisburg Pike in Landisville, Waltz said.
In Manheim Township, a chain-reaction accident at Routes 30 and 23 tied up traffic for three hours. It started when a vehicle hit a concrete median on eastbound Route 30, leading to three other vehicles careening into that vehicle, the guardrail and each other.
RAW VIDEO: Rt. 30 crash slows traffic
Also, a sport utility vehicle crashed into the front of Brook Lawn Farm Market, punching a large hole in the Lititz Pike stand where area residents have bought produce and Christmas trees for decades.
As he surveyed the damage to his building from his snowy parking lot, Brook Lawn owner Jim Erb echoed the reactions of others across the county.
"Fortunately," he said, "no one was hurt. We can repair the building."
Waltz, the East Hempfield officer, said, "That's the amazing part, that no one was hurt. We had two rollovers, and no one was hurt in any of those."
Several drivers involved in accidents were cited for failing to drive at a safe speed, including Mohammed Nasir of Lancaster, whose vehicle hit Brook Lawn.
Erb said he will rebuild his stand, parts of which dates to the mid-1950s, and is closed until April.
Two drivers in the Route 30 accident, Jeffrey Martin of Manheim and Lori Greech of Lititz, also were cited for failing to drive at a safe speed.
Another storm, known as an Arctic clipper, likely will bring us a dose of snow Thursday night into Friday morning, according to Millersville University meteorologist Eric Horst.
Between 1 and 3 inches of snow is expected to fall. Afterward, bundle up. The coldest air of the winter is predicted, with highs in the low to mid-20s Saturday and wind chills that will make it feel like zero.