'Roads are getting pretty slick,' a police officer reported to dispatch just after 6 o'clock.
One step to the next, one street to the next, it will be unclear until well after dawn whether it's icy or simply wet.
Many schools throughout the region were on two-our or other delays this morning. Check out the list we share with WFMZ.
It was 32 degrees just before 6 this morning in Easton. Rain was falling. In some places it was freezing as it hit the surface. In other places, it was washing away.
Highways were in good shape early on, with Pennsylvania and New Jersey State Police in our northern reaches reporting wet roads and no accidents.
But crashes in both directions about 6 o'clock closed Interstate 78 at mile marker 10 in Bethlehem Township, N.J. , state police report.
"The whole mountain is closed until we can salt the road," a sergeant at the Perryville barracks said about Jugtown Mountain.
A tractor-trailer broke a concrete barrier on the mountain, police said at 6:45, and authorities hoped to get eastbound lanes open as soon salt trucks could get the ice melted. Traffic was backed up miles in both directions. Detours were in place.
The highway reopened eastbound about 8 this morning and westbound about 8:35, police said.
And a crash on Route 22 East along Cemetery Curve involved a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation truck and a car, but did not hurt anyone, according to an emergency dispatch.
"Everything's good so far," a trooper at the PSP Belfast barracks said earlier, while a trooper at the NJSP barracks in Hope Township, having just come inside, said, "we're good to go."
Many believe freezing rain is the worst weather of its kind. A warning is in place until 10 this morning.
National Weather Service meteorologist Dean Iovino said it happens when it's warmer aloft but at or below freezing at the surface. When the rain hits the freezing surface, it becomes ice.
"It tends to be a little but tricky," he said. "Heavily treated" roads will likely be safer, he said, and it likely won't rain hard enough early on to wash away the brine that road crews put in place to lower the freezing temperatures on the surface.
A shift supervisor at the Northampton County emergency dispatch center said there weren't any major accidents early on and that road crews were treating secondary streets.
"The most dangerous period will be now until 8," Iovino said just before 6 o'clock.