Just days after enjoying their holiday vacation, many area students were given a late Christmas present as frigid temperatures blew into the Black Belt over the weekend, causing most of the schools in the region to be closed Monday and Tuesday.

Don Willingham, interim superintendent of Dallas County Schools, said the Arctic blast that closed the district’s schools on Monday and Tuesday was a big concern because of the icy conditions that could greet buses traveling along so many roads throughout Dallas County.

“Every system has their own issues to deal with during this kind of weather, and ours is the buses,” Willingham said. “We thought about doing a delayed start to the day, like Chilton County did. But, to us, the temperature at 2 p.m. wouldn’t have been any better that it was at 8 a.m. We rely on our buses, and our biggest fear was some of the low spots on those roads icing over.”

Willingham said the decision to close the schools on Monday was announced on Sunday to allow parents, teachers and bus drivers to make arrangements for their day, rather that to wait until the 5 a.m. deadline on Monday.

“We try to let people know early, if we can, so they can make arrangements,” Willingham said. “All of the school systems in the Black Belt, we were talking to see what the consensus was. You don’t want to be the only district opened, but you also don’t want to have the knee-jerk reaction and close early.”

Gerald Shirley, Superintendent with Selma City Schools, has worked in the school system for decades and said the closing of all the Selma City Schools on Monday and Tuesday is extremely rare.

“I’ve been here 37 years, and this is the first time I can remember us closing because of the severity of just the cold,” Shirley said. “But, regardless, we will be open bright and early Wednesday.”

Aaron Gleason, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Calera, said the below-freezing temperatures will hover over the Black Belt for a little while longer before moving on.

“The next time we are going to be above freezing is actually going to be Wednesday afternoon,” Gleason said. “The good news is, there is no chance of snow or ice or anything between now and then, that would have passed through the region Sunday night into Monday morning.”

Gleason said the frigid temperatures experienced in Selma and Montgomery this week are the coldest since 2011, but other portions of the state are going even further back to rewrite their history books.

“Further north, some of these single digit temperatures we are seeing in the northern portions of the state, is the coldest air we have seen since 2003,” Gleason said. “It’s been over ten years at least.”

Willingham said he is unsure whether students in the school district will have to make up the two missed days at a later point.

“Typically, we build in two weather days into the schedule,” Willingham said. “We did not do that this year, so we will probably make up the days by extending each day or making them up at the end of the year. If the state declares this to be an emergency, it won’t be something we have to make up.”