Icy roads in Summit Township proved troublesome for school bus drivers Tuesday morning.

Bill Wehr, operations manager at Valley Lines, which provides bus transportation in the Butler School District, said the district had a number of minor problems dealing with road conditions.

“Normally, Summit is good,” Wehr said. “We do not have issues there. It must have just been the timing of things there this morning.”

The most notable incident delayed a St. Luke Lutheran school bus on Beck Road. The bus slid sideways across the road while its driver was navigating up a hill.

Wendy Simmons lives on Beck Road and watched the bus struggle on the ice while on the phone with her husband. The bus held two of her children, ages 6 and 10.

“I could tell she was having troubles on the road,” Simmons said. “I said to him, 'She's still having problems on that hill. She can't get over it.'”

A Davey Tree Service team that was nearby provided some salt to get the bus moving, both Wehr and Simmons said.

Not taking any chances, Simmons removed her children from the bus and drove them to school herself.

The bus is supposed to arrive at the school by 9 a.m., she said, but it didn't make it until 9:36 a.m. She spotted it in the parking lot.

Simmons said the township hadn't treated roads in Summit early enough for the morning commute.

“Our roads were a sheet of ice this morning,” she said.

Wehr said other problems in Summit Tuesday morning were mostly tied to traffic on Herman Road. Other buses didn't slide, but they were delayed by slow traffic in the area.

No buses were damaged, and no one was hurt on any school bus, Wehr said. To his knowledge, the buses did not hit anything. The Beck Road bus did not hit an embankment or ditch.

Larry Osche, a township supervisor and the township's road master, said he believed Summit got hit the hardest by ice and snow.

“Sometimes, people have to realize that when something like this hits, the guys are out there,” Osche said. “But they can only get so many roads at a time.”

Osche said his team of three road workers hit the roads at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The township has four trucks, of which one is a spare. One of the three regularly used vehicles didn't start Tuesday morning, he said. They bought extra batteries for it later in the day to prevent similar problems in the future.

The spare truck wasn't geared up for the snow and couldn't be used, he said.

Osche said the township's salt supply is full.

The hill on Beck Road that proved troublesome may warrant more attention in the future, he added.

“I've got other roads I've got to take care of first,” Osche said. “But I'll look at getting (to) that one more.”

Butler County received between 1½ and 2 inches of snow in various areas, according to Lee Hendricks, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Pittsburgh office.

Hendricks said his office was predicting another inch Tuesday night, and then another 1 to 2 inches Wednesday night.

Forecasters predict the weekend will bring temperatures in the 40-to-50 degree range and mostly constant rain.

Hendricks could provide only county-level, not township-level snowfall data Tuesday.