Area children who woke before dawn yesterday to find stockings stuffed by Santa Claus but no snow on the ground -- just pouring rain -- were treated to a holiday surprise a few hours later.

It would be a white Christmas after all.

But the snow that delighted those housebound on Christmas morning also created all sorts of headaches for motorists and highway crews.

With overnight forecasters predicting an abundance of rain for the Baltimore metropolitan region yesterday, highway officials sent road crews home during the early morning hours -- only to find themselves caught unawares when the cottonball-sized flakes began to fall by midmorning.

"We're doing that thing where you believe the forecast because it's what you want to hear so you can be home for Christmas," said Jim Lathe, assistant bureau chief for the Baltimore County Bureau of Highways. "It kind of got us this time."

With salt trucks scarce on roads as the weather turned, dispatchers across parts of Central Maryland reported multiple accidents throughout the morning. Most were fender-benders -- cars hitting median walls, running into ditches or flipping over.

Road crews that were remobilized during the morning hours found themselves playing catch-up later. Motorists slogged through slush on major roads, spun out on black ice and dodged multiple wrecks. And officials at Baltimore-Washington International Airport closed both major runways just after 11:30 a.m. to clean up a half-inch of slush, forcing a delay of some holiday flights. While the first runway reopened about 1:30 p.m., the second remained closed until just before 3 p.m., said Cheryl Carley, an airport spokeswoman.

"The weather forecasters all said rain -- rain, rain, rain. No white Christmas," said Sandra Dobson, a spokeswoman for the State Highway Administration. "You can imagine, even the best technological equipment can't predict Mother Nature."

Weather forecasters had predicted a fairly mixed bag for the Baltimore area, calling for mostly rain that would turn to snow near the end of the storm. But the change came sooner than expected in some areas -- and the snow barely brushed others that were bracing for a much bigger winter storm.

About 8 inches blanketed Frostburg while more central areas in Montgomery and Howard counties recorded about 3 inches.

The weather uncertainty was courtesy of a split in the low-pressure system feeding the storm and the alternate warm and cold air filtering through. Weather for the Baltimore area, which was sandwiched between the now-split system, was affected by the system's exact track, said Neal DiPasquale, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sterling, Va.

That difference left highway crews racing to clear roads after the first snows fell.

Baltimore County had people out throughout the night -- at about half its staff -- but sent some home in the morning when forecasters predicted rain. The start of the snowfall brought crews out in full force, Lathe said.

State highway officials sent crews home overnight once the precipitation turned to rain. About 9:30 a.m., Montgomery County crews were reactivated, and others quickly followed. By late morning the entire state was remobilizing, Dobson said.

The snow and ice left some Christmas Day events bare of spectators.

Normally, the Jewish Museum of Maryland's Christmas Day event attracts more than 300 people, but about 70 attended yesterday's festivities at the Lloyd Street attraction.

"We had a great program planned. It's really a shame about the weather," said museum volunteer Bobbie Horwitz as she served homemade blintzes to about a dozen people.

Still, others found a need to be out and about.

Hospice nurse Carol Hay left her Sykesville home about 8:30 a.m. and drove her Subaru Outback through the icy streets to Ellicott City and then to Catonsville and Baltimore to visit patients.

As she drove, she passed cars that had slammed into poles or into other cars. But as long as she could find a way through the traffic, she planned to finish all of her visits.

Hay, who has worked most holidays and picked up this Christmas after another nurse asked to take off, said she views her job as a privilege. And while to Hay, who has done hospice nursing for about a decade, such holiday visits are "routine," to the patients and families she visits, it's "something special," she said.

"The fact that it's snowing is not going to stop us," she said.

Sun staff writer Jason Song contributed to this article.