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An air-conditioning malfunction caused traffic signals throughout Montgomery County to slip out of sync Tuesday morning, a county spokeswoman said.

The air conditioner leaked water in the 11th-floor room that houses the traffic signal computers at the County Executive Office Building in Rockville, said county spokeswoman Esther Bowring.

The leak triggered a sensor, which cut off the power in the room in order to protect the electronics equipment. Lack of power caused the computers that manage the traffic signals to shut down about 7:15 a.m., Bowring said.

The signals continued to function, but were not timed as they normally would be during rush hour to help the traffic flow, Bowring said.

However, unlike last fall when aging computers failed, resulting in a traffic nightmare for days, the air conditioners were fixed, the wet floor dried and the computers restored in about two hours, Bowring said.

"We were really lucky for a couple of reasons," Bowring said. "It happened during regular business hours, and two, the traffic is really light right now because school is out of session and many people have headed out of town already for the Fourth of July."

There were some backups in the morning rush, but Bowring said that appeared to be related more to a commuters getting off Interstate 95 to avoid backups there caused by an overturned truck.