Nearly two dozen accidents were reported and thousands lost power after winter weather downed lines and iced roads over the weekend.

The North Carolina State Highway Patrol handled 16 collisions in Scotland County on Saturday, with four of those accidents leading to injury, the agency reported. There were also four calls for stranded motorists.

Most of the wrecks happened on highways, with seven reported on U.S. 74, three reported on U.S. 401, two reported on U.S. 501 and one reported on U.S. 15. The rest of the calls came from secondary roads.

On Sunday, there were four accidents and one stranded motorist call, which the agency considered average.

Laurinburg police also handled seven wrecks on Saturday, with two cases of vehicles overturning.

One incident happened on U.S. 15-401 when a Laurinburg man lost control of his 2004 Dodge vehicle while driving across an icy overpass, according to a report. His car left the highway and turned over once, coming to rest upright on the tires.

The vehicle suffered $4,000 in damages.

The other incident happened when a Gibson man lost control of his vehicle in a 2003 Dodge vehicle while driving too fast for the icy conditions and frozen precipitation, according to the report. His car overturned twice, coming to rest on its roof.

The vehicle suffered an estimated $5,000 in damages.

Nearly 6,400 Progress Energy customers were in the dark at some point over the weekend according to company spokesperson David McNeill. Most of these – about 5,900 – experienced power loss on Saturday while 500 lost power on Sunday.

McNeill said much of the power loss happened outside of cities and towns, with 3,800 of those affected living in rural areas. Other power outages affected 1,800 in Laurinburg, 600 in Gibson and 250 in Maxton.

McNeill attributed the power outages to accumulations of ice on power lines and tree limbs along with high winds.

"We know it was an inconvenience for our customers to be without power in this cold weather," McNeill said.

The company was pleased with the quick restoration of power to most customers, in part because Progress Energy called in additional personnel and equipment in anticipation of the icy conditions, according to McNeill.

Some equipment came from the company's sister operation in Florida while other personnel and trucks came from Georgia and Maryland.

Power customers of the city of Laurinburg faired well in the storm, with less than 15 residences experiencing outages, according to Ronald Pierce, electric distribution director.

"We were pretty lucky with what transpired here," Pierce said.

An aggressive tree-limb cutting program over the past few years helped protect the lines, according to Pierce.

Lumber River EMC also had few customers lose power, according to company spokesperson Walter White.

"Over the weekend we had outages affect less than 50 consumers in Scotland County and Maxton," White said. "All service was restored within a two hour window by 11 p.m. Saturday. The cause of the outages were ice on power lines and trees."

According to the National Weather Service, Scotland County received 0.57 inches of snow and ice on Saturday while the temperatures hovered between the mid-20s and low-30s through most of the day.