DECATUR - The calendar says winter doesn't begin until Dec. 21, but try telling that to motorists who wound up sliding into ditches  ;and into each other on snow and ice-slicked roads Monday morning.

An overnight Sunday snowfall that continued into the morning commute, combined with a shape drop in temperatures, produced slick spots on roads all over Central Illinois. Police reported a slew of weather-related accidents.

Most were fender-benders with minor injuries but some west and north of Decatur were much more serious. State Police said a 6:45 a.m. accident on U.S. 136 in Logan County resulted in the death of a 21-year-old female driver from Bloomington who collided with a semitruck.

In Decatur and Macon County, city and county police both dealt with higher than normal accident totals.

"The temperature must have just dropped," said Sgt. Lydell Kallenbach with the Macon County Sheriff's Office. "It wasn't that bad when I came into work (Monday) morning and then, all of a sudden, everybody just started sliding off the road and hitting things.

"We had accidents down south of the county, we had them up north, we had them everywhere."

Trooper Cristy Pullen, who serves with the State Police out of District 9 headquarters in Springfield, said one morning accident on Interstate 55 saw a Springfield woman slide into a police squad car that was parked on the shoulder helping another motorist. "Please slow down and increase your stopping distances," she said.

"Remember, we're out there dealing with these crashes and then we have to worry about being hit ourselves."

The National Weather Service says there is a good chance for rain turning to snow on Wednesday and it will stay cold all week. Temperatures will hit 35 to 40 degrees today but drop into to the teens by Wednesday night and struggle into the 20s Thursday. The normal range for this time of year would be a high of 44 and a low of 28.

Some consumers appear to have anticipated the colder weather, however, and shopped accordingly. Patrick Hott, manager of the Farm & Fleet store in Decatur, said the snowfall produced no big rush of customers buying salt and shovels, but he thinks that was because many came in ahead of time.

"We've had plowing companies buying salt a month ago and we've been selling things like snow blowers early, too," he said. "Customers were really getting ahead of the curve."

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