Hunter Wilson/Daily NewsBruce Crawley of Bowling Green hikes this morning up an icy College Street toward Western Kentucky University. — Click here for more ice storm photos from around the area.

Freezing rain in the region created a layer of ice that coated tree branches and sidewalks and resulted in power outages that continued to affect thousands this morning.

Highway crews from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet began pouring salt on major roadways Monday in advance of the winter storm that hit the area.

Still, icy conditions caused both Bowling Green Independent Schools and Warren County Public Schools to cancel classes today.

Downed tree limbs and severed power lines covered in ice resulted in the loss of power to 18,000 homes served by the Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corp., according to WRECC spokesman Rick Carroll.

“At about 3:30 this morning, 2,000 households were out of power,” Carroll said. “The outages were limited at first to the northern counties in our service area, like Butler, Grayson and Edmonson, but households in Warren County have also lost power.”

One falling tree limb caused a head injury to a student on Western Kentucky University’s campus this morning, according to officials.

Media Relations Director Bob Skipper said a student was injured by a falling icy tree branch in the area of Grise Hall. Emergency response officials were called to the scene, but no other information was immediately available.

— Click here for ice storm photos from around the area.

Bowling Green Schools Superintendent Joe Tinius decided initially to open the schools on a one-hour delay after observing between 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. that the streets were not icy enough to create hazardous conditions for bus drivers.

By about 6:15 a.m., however, Tinius said he had gotten reports from bus drivers that too many streets had recently been obstructed by fallen branches to get students to school in time, forcing the district to cancel classes.

“We’re going to be watching the radar and monitoring the 24-hour forecast today and we’ll be back on the streets at about 4:30 tomorrow morning,” Tinius said about how the district will decide whether to hold classes Wednesday – forecasts call for more precipitation in the form of freezing rain and snow.

With schools out today, school resource officers were moved over to patrol duty this morning for the Warren County Sheriff’s Office and are helping respond to incidents, according to Stephen Harmon, records and communications manager for the sheriff’s office.

Harmon said most of the calls received by the office about the weather have had to do with downed power lines and fallen tree limbs.

Officer Barry Pruitt, spokesman for the Bowling Green Police Department, said the ice has not resulted in any major traffic accidents or prolonged street closings in the city, though the city’s dispatch system was temporarily down for a brief stretch this morning.

“Between 6 and 7 a.m., we got 50-plus calls about trees and power lines down,” Pruitt said.

Miles McDaniel, marketing manager for Bowling Green Municipal Utilities, said this morning that about 300 BGMU customers were without power, with the city utility receiving the first calls of downed power lines and tree limbs at about 2:30 a.m.

“We were getting ready for the storm yesterday, fueling and stocking our trucks and getting all our equipment ready to go,” McDaniel said, adding that anyone who sees a downed power line in the city should avoid touching it and should contact BGMU.

— To report power outages or downed lines, call Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. at 842-6541 or BGMU at 782-1200.