FARMVILLE – There was no white Christmas but Presidents' Day dawned with nearly half a foot of snowflakes in Farmville, and up to eight inches in some locations across the area.

And just one day after many people walked around in t-shirts to enjoy Saturday's spring-like temperatures in the 60s.

WFLO measured 5.5 inches of snow that began falling lightly and sporadically Sunday morning before unleashing itself with sudden and sustained vigor by the afternoon, on into the evening and the dark of night.

Dangerously, roads seemed clear as the clock struck 5 p.m., only to become treacherously slick and covered with snow an hour later when the temperatures dropped two degrees to 31.

“We had three motor vehicle crashes that I would attribute to slick roads, and a number of vehicles in ditches,” said Farmville Police Chief Doug Mooney.

The Prince Edward County Sheriff's Department received reports of 11 accidents on Sunday, one resulting in an injury, and two more accidents early Monday morning.

In Buckingham, nine accidents were reported to the Sheriff's office.

Cumberland saw 13 accidents from Sunday through 10 a.m. on Monday.

The wet heavy snow caused more than 400 small outages in Central Virginia Electrical Cooperative's service area, the limbs weighed down by the flaky precipitation.

A CVEC press release described them as “widespread but relatively localized” outages that affecting 1,200 to 1,500 customers.

“Unlike many weather events that cause extensive damage in specific areas,” CVEC spokesperson Greg Kelly reported, “this storm has spread the misery, creating a lot of restoration work. Crews have been moving from one location to another, restoring electric service as they go from one pocket of outages to the next. The challenge in reducing the outage total has been the sheer number of the small outage incidents (more than 400) caused by the snow.”

Ten crews from other electrical cooperatives were helping their CVEC colleagues restore power to customers on Monday afternoon, including customers in Prince Edward, Buckingham, Cumberland, and Appomattox. That work continued into Tuesday, with hopes that all customers would see their power restored that day.

“All CVEC crews and 10 visiting line crews will continue work on Tuesday, resolving the small localized outages, many of which remain in the substation areas east of Charlottesville along Interstate 64 corridor and to the south in Buckingham and other counties,” Kelly said in a press statement.

Southside Virginia Electric Cooperative faced a similar challenge, with customers in Prince Edward, Buckingham and Cumberland still affected Monday afternoon, as were customers in the co-op's 11 other counties of coverage, including Appomattox, Charlotte, Lunenburg and Nottoway.

Temperatures rebounded Monday, hitting the upper 40s and hastening the departure of scenes seemingly straight from Currier and Ives.

Lightening limbs so that lights would not go out.

As quickly as the snow came on Sunday, it melted with equal celerity.