Butler County served as a dividing line for the region's Saturday night winter storm, Pittsburgh's National Weather Service office reported Sunday.

On the southern end of the county, according to NWS meteorologist John Darnley, residents received just a couple of inches, much like Allegheny County.

In Winfield Township, an NWS snowfall tracker reported 2.6 inches Sunday morning. Another in Cranberry Township reported 3 inches.

At Butler County's northern tips, the storm more closely resembled the scenarios described on forecasts warning of heavy accumulation. A NWS site in Slippery Rock recorded 4.5 inches, Darnley said.

In Butler, another site reported 3 inches of snow.

Describing the previous night's storm on Sunday, Darnley sounded both defensive and proud. His station, he said, had been warning the Pittsburgh area for days of a high amount of uncertainty around the storm, and he was happy with how close they had gotten it.

“(The storm pattern) makes perfect sense to me,” Darnley said. “I think the forecast was perfectly fine. If anybody has any problems with it, they can call me. I'd even give out my cell phone.”

He did submit that the storm moved slower and arrived later than expected.

Darnley pointed to radar reports as his proof of success. While Pittsburgh was spared, areas beginning at the northern edge of Butler County did indeed receive the 6 to 12 inches forecasters had warned were coming.

A line of heavy snow cut just slightly to the north of this area. He rattled off a list of snow totals between Columbiana County, Ohio, and Forest County. All received around 10 inches of snow.

“If you listen to what we were saying all week long, we said there was going to be an area of transition,” Darnley said.

Butler County, as it happened, fell into that area.

Much of the county received overnight rain that turned into snow.

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation crews in Butler County observed rainfall until about 1:30 a.m., according to Brent Piccola, assistant maintenance manager for the county. By the time rain gave way to snow, he said, much of the road treatment was being washed away.

“As hard as it was coming down last night, we couldn't apply much chemical or treatment to the roads,” Piccola said.

That isn't to say they didn't try: PennDOT road crews hit the streets to prepare for the storm at about 3 a.m. Saturday, Piccola said. Crews were working 12-hour shifts.

On Sunday morning, they had 40 trucks out clearing Butler County roads.

“No one is going home until the roads are safe,” Piccola said.

He said road crews Sunday were aiming to clear as much snow as possible before colder temperatures set in overnight.

Darnley confirmed that temperatures were soon to drop. The NWS forecast overnight temperatures in the single digits Sunday and Monday nights, with only a 15 degree high on Monday.

Tuesday, he said, should bring a return to temperatures in the low 30s.

And early Wednesday, another, albeit small, snow system is in the forecast.

“It's not unusual,” Darnley said. “It's not an anomaly this time of year to experience this type of weather. We had it so mild in December, and I think that's why people panicked a little bit.”

Darnley said the storm patterns that brought rain followed immediately by snow likely proved more dangerous than places that received 9 or 10 inches.

“It was very dangerous traveling this morning,” Darnley said.

Piccola, though, said road crews didn't encounter many dangerous drivers Sunday.

“People really listened and stayed at home,” he said. “The guys weren't really fighting traffic.”

PennDOT recommends drivers stay six car lengths behind an operating plow truck. Drivers should give plows a wide berth on roads, according to a PennDOT news release, because plows themselves are generally larger than the vehicles carrying them. The trucks often have blind spots that make traveling adjacent to one inadvisable.

On Interstate 79, PennDOT instituted both a commercial vehicle ban and a decreased 45 mph speed limit during parts of the weekend storm cycle. The commercial ban was lifted at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release.

The release noted that in Pennsylvania last winter, 440 vehicle crashes caused 221 injuries on “snowy, slushy or ice-covered roadways where aggressive-driving behaviors such as speeding or making careless lane changes were factors.”

West Penn Power's outage map indicated few or no power outages in Butler County throughout Sunday. At about 5 p.m., Jackson Township showed about 81 customers were without power, the day's most notable outage.

As of Sunday night, no outages were reported.