The winter storm that crawled over Monroe County produced travel headaches and power outages over the Christmas holiday.

However, plenty of advance warning kept auto accidents to a minimum, Monroe County Sheriff Dennis Pedersen said.

“A storm like this is always a challenge, and it’s always exacerbated by the holiday weekend,” Pedersen said Sunday. “But we did pretty well because it was so well advertised. People watched the weather and changed their travel plans.”

The storm produced one traffic fatality in Monroe County (see related article, right).

In the city of Tomah, there were three weather-related crashes over the holiday weekend — one each on Dec. 24, Dec. 25 and Dec. 26 — but none resulted in injuries.

The storm began as snow Wednesday night and dumped about three to four inches of wet, heavy snow before transitioning into freezing rain and later rain on Thursday.

The rain again froze after sundown Thursday. Pedersen said Thursday was the worst day for traffic accidents.

“Clearly, we had most of our calls on the 24th,” Pedersen said.

The ice also produced scattered power outages Thursday south of Tomah and in the village of Warrens. An outage in the town of Tomah lasted from 8 p.m. until 10:30 p.m.