Shelby County residents woke this morning to an unfamiliar scene — snow in Dixie.

A blanket of heavy, wet snow covered most of Shelby County by daybreak and meteorologists predicted snowfall would continue here until this afternoon, heavy at times.

At about 8:20 a.m., the National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Warning for Shelby County until 3 p.m. today.

Meteorologist Scott Unger at the National Weather Service Birmingham office, located at the Shelby County Airport in Calera, said, “We don’t expect the snow to really start tapering off until 2 or 3 p.m. this afternoon. We could get two or three inches accumulation.”

He said it’s been nine years — 2000 — since Shelby County has seen this much accumulated snowfall.

“We see the snow ending during the middle of this afternoon and expect for winds to pick up on the back side of this system when it pulls out of here. We hope temperatures get warm enough to melt what’s on the roads and dry some of it out before temperatures drop into the 20s overnight. That could mean for some icy roads in the morning,” Under said.

At 8 a.m. today, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department reported no problems on any of the county’s roads and bridges. Drivers were warned to use extreme caution as icy conditions could cause roads to become very slick.

Some Shelby County churches called off morning services.