Another round of cold weather and rain left roads icy, closed schools and generally made conditions uncomfortable in Denton and surrounding areas Thursday.

DRC/David Minton

Sleeping mats cover the floor of the dining room at the Salvation Army Emergency shelter on McKinney Street Wednesday in Denton.

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Forecasters are expecting the cold weather to continue through the weekend but said that the next week should bring warmer temperatures.

Temperatures today are not likely to get out of the 20s, said Jennifer Dunn with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. Winds blowing about 10 mph will keep it feeling colder than recorded temperatures, she said.

A wind chill advisory remains in effect until 10 a.m. today.

“Friday night temperatures will drop back to almost 10 degrees, with lower teens across Denton County itself,” she said. “Another wind chill advisory will likely be needed as wind chill will be around zero.”

The cold stretch continues Saturday with temperatures below freezing, though Dunn said it will probably warm up Sunday.

“And by ‘warm up,’ I mean above freezing,” she said. “If there is any ice left on the roads, if it has not evaporated, it’s a good chance those slick spots will stay on the road, but we will not be adding to it.”

Denton Airport reported a morning low of 22 degrees and 0.03 of an inch of precipitation Thursday.

Dunn said no more precipitation is expected until late next week.

The highs will be in the upper 30s and continue into the next week with temperatures in the 50s by Wednesday, according to forecasts.

The freezing rain overnight led Denton officials to decide at about 5 a.m. to close schools, district spokeswoman Sharon Cox said. Transportation employees and Superintendent Ray Braswell checked road conditions about 4 a.m. Thursday across the district’s 180 square miles, she said, and they determined the roadways were dangerous for students and staff to travel along.

“It was the icy bridges and overpasses, and there was some black ice patches in some spots,” Cox said.

Within an hour of deciding to close the schools, a message service called students and staff to notify them of the decision, she said.

She said schools planned to open today, but officials would monitor conditions overnight and decide before 6 this morning.

Ponder Superintendent Bruce Yeager closed his schools Thursday to ensure the safety of the students.

“This morning it was solid ice,” he said. “I was pretty confident it would clear out during the day, but I believed it wasn’t fit for students or buses to be out this morning. The roadways were pretty frozen.”

He expected classes to resume in his district today.

DRC/Al Key

Denton Municipal Electric employee Javier Molina takes down banners, along with wreaths, from the light poles around the Courthouse on the Square in Denton Thursday.

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Sanger Superintendent Jack Biggerstaff said the decision to close district schools was made between 5 and 6 a.m.

“The roads were slick, particularly on the overpasses. We just determined we were going to close school,” he said. “That’s pretty much for today. It appears the drier air is taking some of that [ice] away on the highways, yet there are still patches. I would expect, unless something drastically changes, that we would be going to school in the morning.”

Argyle school officials said they closed schools because of icy weather conditions Thursday morning and will determine if classes will resume today once staffers drive roads prior to schools opening to see if they are safe.

Rather than close, Lake Dallas school officials opted to open two hours late Thursday. They said that they wanted to ensure safe travel for those who may have needed extra time getting to school because of morning traffic conditions.

School district spokesman Chris Lamb said buses were warmed and sent out early to pick up students for 10 a.m. classes, and bus drivers circled their routes a second time closer to school start times to ensure no students were left behind.

District employees planned for the cold weather, Lamb said, and made checks Wednesday to determine that heating units were functioning properly and ready when students and staff arrived for classes Thursday.

“Our classes,” he said, “they’re nice and toasty.”

Lamb said employees would return to work early today to warm buses so they’re out on time and there’s a minimal wait time, if any, for students at bus stops.

Some residents sought shelter from the cold.

The Salvation Army in Denton reported turning away some people seeking beds to get out of Wednesday night’s cold weather, despite the organization’s pledge to not do so.

Maj. Ward Matthews, commander for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said in one case a woman had stayed at the shelter beyond the normal guidelines and didn’t qualify for the organization’s transitional housing program.

She would have been allowed to stay if the beds were not full or more people were not expected, he said.

“For those outside the guidelines, we said ‘you’re staying here because we have the bed; if we need the bed for someone who meets the guidelines, you won’t have the bed,’” Matthews said. “For a night like last night and tonight, we refer people to Immaculate Conception.”

He said the situation could have been resolved if the crew, who Matthews said was inexperienced, thought the situation through.

“A more experienced crew would have done a quick bed count and said, ‘Come on. We’re all right,’” he said. “Our shelter director is on vacation. They should have called the officer in charge, and they didn’t do that. We’re fixing that before the shelter director returns. The officer in charge will be there tonight with extra staff to make sure incidents like this don’t happen.”

Others were turned away for typical things that would happen almost every night, he added.

In two cases in which people were told no and that they needed to take advantage of going to the church, one person presented no identification and another in the extended-stay program stayed with her sister.

“Each case has its own individual difference,” he said.

The shelter can handle as many as 45 people, officials said.

People also can seek shelter from the cold at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, 2255 N. Bonnie Brae St., from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Staff writer Britney Tabor contributed to this story.

BJ LEWIS can be reached at 940-566-6875. His e-mail address is blewis@dentonrc.com .