Just hours before the sun was shining on this country road in Loudoun County, it was a wintry mess.

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Heather Radford's son tried to drive to school this morning but he ran into a ditch after he slid off the road.

“I think he was going a reasonable speed but the road conditions were just bad,” she says.

But it wasn’t bad enough to cancel school. At least well before dawn when that decision had to be made.

Loudoun County schools stayed open Friday and when a squall moved in an hour later, it was too late to reverse course.

“By that time our busses are on the road, Teachers are on their way in, commuters to D.C. have already left,” says Wayne Byard, Loudoun County Schools spokesman. “So then you have the problem how do you call people back?”

It was a perfect storm of inconvenience. Six school busses hit by sliding cars with no injuries and some students with long waits for busses stuck in traffic.

The problem with rural counties when it comes to school delays is they're just huge. Loudoun County is 520 square miles and goes all the way to West Virginia. So while it may be nice in one part of the county, the conditions may be completely different somewhere else.

Some schools saw delays up to an hour. Others like Eagle Ridge Elementary started just a few minutes late.