Snow snarls 100 vehicles 5 hours, drops 15 inches at beach

(The Center Square) – Interstate 85 reopened late Saturday night after more than five hours with 100-plus vehicles stranded, and 15 inches of snow fell at the beach in one of North Carolina’s most significant winter storms in a decade or more.

No deaths were reported on the highways by the North Carolina Highway Patrol among 750 collisions and 817 calls for service between 12:01 a.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday. That included the northbound lanes of I-85 in Cabarrus County between mile markers 60 and 63, where a small crash near Exit 60 for Dale Earnhardt Boulevard grew to snarl more than 30 tractor-trailers and 70 other vehicles and brought out the National Guard, according to published reports.

Power outages, however, were not as significant as feared. Many were associated with last weekend’s ice. Sunday morning, total customers without power was the most of the weekend and remained less than 5,000.

The second winter storm in as many weeks staggering the Atlantic Seaboard brought more snow than ice and...