Late-night snow squalls and plummeting temperatures caused untreated roadways in Johnson County to rapidly freeze overnight into Saturday morning.
High temperatures on Friday reached the low 40s, and pavement temperatures across Johnson County ranged from 42 to 48°F around 4 p.m.
By 11 p.m., repeated bursts of heavy snow showers, also known as snow squalls, had impacted the area as air temperatures plummeted into the teens and winds gusted to nearly 40 miles per hour.
Pavement temperatures by that time had also dropped below freezing.
This created icy conditions on Interstate 35, particularly between Santa Fe Street and Old 56 Highway in Olathe.
At 11:10 p.m., Olathe police, firefighters and Johnson County Med-Act paramedics responded to multiple crashes on the northbound side of I-35 just north of Old 56 Highway.
At least three tractor-trailers and two passenger cars had slid into each other near the bridge over Sheridan Street.
Once in the crash area, emergency crews faced difficulties of their own, with fire trucks struggling to maintain traction on the ice and an Olathe Police SUV sliding sideways across several lanes, crashing into an already stalled Mercedes-Benz.
The northbound lanes were quickly shut down to prevent additional vehicles from crashing as crews checked for injuries.
On the southbound side of the highway, several tractor-trailers spun out on the ice, and at least one was hit by an SUV that slid sideways into its trailer.
Both directions of the interstate were brought to a standstill until police and Kansas Highway Patrol troopers were able to clear the crashed vehicles from the highway.
No injuries were reported in any of the crashes.
By 11:40 p.m., the National Weather Service’s Kansas City field office had issued a special weather statement warning of continued snow squalls accompanied by wind gusts above 30 miles per hour.
“While actual snowfall accumulations have been light, tire track melting and re-freezing appears to be resulting in slick road conditions,” the weather service cautioned in its statement. “While the snow will not last long, heavily traveled roads may see several slick spots.”
The southbound lanes of I-35 reopened around midnight, and traffic was able to slowly navigate the icy spots.
On the northbound side, traffic backed up more than a mile and a half back to 151st Street with all three lanes packed with passenger vehicles and tractor-trailers. Many drivers sat with nowhere to go for more than two hours.
The northbound lanes reopened just at 1:25 a.m., and the tail end of the backup didn’t start to move until about 15 minutes later.
A Kansas Department of Transportation snowplow was also caught in the backup. The truck reached the crash site to treat the pavement by 1:30 a.m.
No injuries were reported in any of the crashes.
