John Akin chipped away at his ice-covered car Sunday, and inch by inch the evidence of the freezing rain that fell overnight began to drop away.

“It’s kind of a pain,” the Kansas University junior from Prairie Village said, as he labored outside his apartment building near Ninth and Illinois streets.

Akin and numerous others like him found a way to cope with what was expected to be the first of two rounds of winter storms to move through Lawrence and northeastern Kansas.

Round two was to bring more freezing drizzle and then snow to the area late Sunday night and early this morning. Snow accumulation could be 1 to 2 inches before it stops this afternoon, according to 6News weather forecaster Matt Jacobs.

Late Sunday night only officials with the McLouth and Perry-Lecompton school districts and Veritas Christian School had decided to close schools today.

Streets and highways were generally clear of ice by Sunday afternoon. But earlier that morning, not only were streets ice-covered but so were parking lots and sidewalks. Many Lawrence-area churches canceled services because of the weather.

The weather may have caused many Kansas University basketball fans to stay home from Sunday afternoon’s men’s game against Colorado. Although KU officials said the 16,000-seat Allen Fieldhouse was sold out for the game, there were about 2,000 empty seats when the game started.

Tree hazards

About a quarter of an inch of ice covered the ground as well as trees and power lines, Jacobs said.

Throughout the day there were scattered power outages in Lawrence, Westar Energy spokeswoman Gina Penzig said.

“We’ve restored power to about 190 customers but right now there are no outages,” Penzig said about 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical responded to only one report of a downed power line. That was Sunday morning in the 1900 block of Ohio Street.

There were other, isolated reports of downed tree limbs in northeastern Kansas. But Sunday’s ice storm was not nearly as serious as the one that hit the area in January 2002, causing major power outages, numerous downed trees and more than $70 million in damage.

Stephen Lercher, of Omaha, Neb., scrapes ice off his windshield in the Naismith Hall parking lot. My

Akin said he made a treacherous middle-of-the-night walk home from Missouri Street, only three blocks away.

“The sidewalks were really slick; I took a few spills along the way” he said.

Despite the trouble Akin had, others had it worse. At Clinton Lake on Sunday morning, someone was trying to unload a boat from a trailer and thanks to ice, the trailer and the pickup truck it was attached to slid into the water. The truck was totally submerged when a wrecker from Transmasters arrived to pull it out.

“You could stand on the roof of the truck and still be standing in three feet of water, Transmasters manager Kevin Raasch said.

Dispatchers said a Douglas County sheriff’s officer was sent to investigate but no information was available from the sheriff’s office about the incident.

Few accidents

Law enforcement dispatchers in Douglas, Franklin and Jefferson counties Sunday afternoon said they had not received large numbers of traffic accident calls. Even Kansas Highway Patrol dispatchers for this area said there had not been a large number of accidents and none that involved serious injuries.

Accident calls were starting to increase, however, Sunday evening as water on the roadways began to refreeze.

Richard Haig, the manager and owner of Westside 66 and Carwash, 2815 W. Sixth St., said business was down about 35 percent or 40 percent Sunday.

“This time of year people really hibernate, and we don’t see many problems,” he said. “A few people are coming in for ice scrapers and things like that.”

The Highway Patrol said icy conditions played a role in an accident near Hays that killed a Colorado man. Alan L. Carnill, 42, of Aurora, Colo., died when the car he was in went out of control on an icy bridge on Kansas Highway 183 early Sunday.

In Kansas City, Mo., about 30 vehicles were stranded briefly during the early morning hours Sunday on an ice-covered Interstate 70 bridge that spans the Kansas-Missouri state line.

In Manhattan, concerns about the weather caused Kansas State University to postpone today’s scheduled Landon Lecture by Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

Today’s high temperatures should be about 26 degrees, Jacobs said. Then the bottom drops out.

“We’re going to have clear skies and it’s going to get cold,” Jacobs said, as he predicted the overnight low at 6 degrees.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.