But Dr. Gangel noted that the sky was clear.

But Dr. Gangel noted that the sky was clear. And he desperately wanted to open school. So he gambled that the sun might come out and melt things enough to allow school to open after a two-hour delay.

At 6 a.m., he put a two-hour delay message on the school tape machine, then phoned 13 radio and TV stations with the same message, hoping that the news would be included in their 6:30 a.m. broadcasts.

Then he asked Mrs. Biggs and Mr. Smith to check their bus routes again, while he returned to his hollows.

All of them felt their vehicles skid in various spots. The issue was definitively settled by a 7:40 report from the Sheriffs Office that there had been a three-car accident on Route 707 near Slate Mills as a result of icy roads.

Dr. Gangel raced to record a new message: “Rappahannock County schools will be closed today, Feb. 8.” Then he phoned the radio and TV stations again.

Friday Brings Black Ice

Friday dawned clear and relatively warm. Dr. Gangel was pleased to see that his outdoor thermometer read 35 degrees. “We’ll have a normal school day,” he thought happily as he backed his Ford out of his driveway at 4:30 a.m.

Instead his car began sliding soon after it hit the first asphalt road. “What’s going on?” he asked himself. The road looked totally clean.

He got the answer from Mr. Smith, who had heard it from a colleague in Culpeper County. It was black ice. A thin, invisible sheet of ice covered sections of roads everywhere.

Unwilling to accept another day out of school, Dr. Gangel opted for two-hour delay again. Then he nervously listened to the bad news filter in: there were early-morning car accidents in Madison County due to black ice, Tollowed by three wrecks in Rappahannock.

Dr. Gangel agonized: “Will the sun melt the black ice by the time the buses must make their late-opening rounds?”