Mother Nature took a turn for the worse Tuesday, as commuters and pedestrians throughout Ames were forced to slow their travel due to icy road conditions.

Dennis Erickson, manager of Facilities Planning and Management, said their staff has been working diligently since Saturday to de-ice the 34 miles of sidewalks on campus.

“The bad part about ice is that it’s everywhere, all at once,” Erickson said. “We use a combination of sand and calcium chloride [on the sidewalks]. This combination works better than salt because it’s not as harsh on the concrete.”

Erickson said combating ice is a much tougher task than dealing with heavy amounts of snowfall.

“[Dealing with] ice is much, much worse. Also, people can walk in snow better than they can on ice,” he said.

Erickson advises students to “be careful in the early mornings when walking on campus until [the ice] starts to soften up or gets cleaned off.”

Ames Police Cmdr. Jim Robinson said despite the slippery road conditions, traffic was running relatively smoothly.

“The roads are very slick, but since 7 a.m., we’ve only had one traffic accident,” Robinson said Tuesday afternoon. “Given the conditions that have presented themselves, we’ve been very fortunate.”

Robinson said he attributes the low number of accidents to drivers taking their time while on the road.

“Folks are apparently slowing down and driving careful,” Robinson said. “We would request that they continue to do so.”

Bob Bourne, transit director for CyRide, said the morning bus routes ran well.

“The city and the university did a great job this morning,” Bourne said. “We only had one [bus] stuck down by the stadium.

“Otherwise, all routes were running from on time to five minutes late. The most dangerous paths were actually the sidewalks.”

Bourne said the transit system has a plan of action when bad weather conditions arise.

“Our normal policy is when it’s not safe to drive, we just stop the buses where they are,” he said. “If there’s no bus coming or going for a while, it’s probably too dangerous to be out walking.”

Tiffany Wingert, community relations officer for Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, said the hospital did not see many weather-related injuries on Tuesday.

“As of about 12:30 [p.m. Tuesday], we have only had two car accidents with minor injuries, and there was one fall,” Wingert said.

Daryl Herzmann, program assistant for the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, said the weather this week has been interesting.

“We actually had a situation where we had very warm air, maybe 1,000 feet above the surface” Herzmann said.

“Today, we have a warm layer just above the surface, and it’s melting into snow. Then it falls to a colder layer of the surface and freezes into freezing rain.”

Erin Little, meteorologist for WOI-Channel 5 News, said she expects things will be much quieter as the week progresses.

“The flurries will continue, but there will be drier roadways.,” Little said.

“It will be partly cloudy and cold with temperatures only in the 20s. [The temperatures] are expected to be in the mid-40s on Saturday. It looks like more cold air next week, though, so the warm-up will be brief.”