The Washington area was socked with its first big snowstorm of the winter season yesterday, snarling road traffic and stranding air travelers, forcing cancellations of flights, parties and SAT tests, and delighting children who rolled snowmen and broke out their sleds.
The storm was shorter than forecast but still intense, with snow falling up to two inches an hour at its height. Officials beseeched residents to stay home while they put snow emergency plans into effect. Yet the region was largely spared the heavy, disabling snow that was blanketing much of the Northeast last night. Officials in parts of New York and New England were expecting upwards of 20 inches of snow as well as blizzard conditions.
Keith Bloom goes airborne with his son, Nicolas, on the George Washington Masonic Memorial hill in Alexandria.
(John Mcdonnell -- The Washington Post)
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But most of the Washington area had about four inches by nightfall as the storm slackened. Parts of Anne Arundel County had seven inches.
For a region that does not shrug off a few inches of snow with the aplomb of, say, Chicago, the impact of yesterday's storm was muted. There was no rush hour to contend with, and students were off from school for the weekend. Many visitors who had come to town for President Bush's inauguration had already left. And there was enough warning for people to stock up on provisions well before the first flake fell.
"Someone was smiling on George Bush," said Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson. "The storm would have been a disaster for a presidential inauguration. Snow, if it's going to come, on a weekend it's just better for everybody. On a Monday, it would have been too much to handle."
Still, officials urged residents to stay inside, even today, when gusting winds up to 40 mph could stir up blinding flurries and cause temperatures to plummet into the single digits.
Yesterday's snow started falling shortly before 9 a.m., sparsely at first and then thick as it intensified in the afternoon, causing numerous fender benders on ice-slickened roads with low visibility.
By mid-afternoon, road crews in Maryland, Virginia and the District were out in full force, clearing roads for the dwindling traffic still moving. The sheer numbers were staggering. In Northern Virginia, 1,200 trucks and snowplows were deployed. In Maryland, about 2,100 crew members were operating 1,800 pieces of equipment at the storm's peak at 4 p.m.
Collisions came in multiples. By 4 p.m., Virginia reported 36 accidents on Interstates 395, 495 and 66 and the Dulles Toll Road. None was serious, and officials sighed with relief that a lack of traffic kept the situation from being worse.
"Everyone obviously heeded the warnings of the forecasters and stayed off the roads," said Alan Etter, spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. He said there were about 30 snow-related traffic accidents in the District, none serious.
In Montgomery County, however, a 70-year-old Pennsylvania man was seriously injured after a Ride On bus skidded into a bus shelter at New Hampshire Avenue and Merwood Drive in Takoma Park shortly before 11:30 a.m. Parts of the structure fell on him, according to Takoma Park police.
At many transportation hubs, the predictions were more dire than the reality. Although buses were running behind schedule, Metro trains maintained their regular Saturday runs, spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said. Amtrak had few delays.
Reagan National Airport closed its runway three times for snow removal. But Reagan, Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International airports all remained opened. They even received flights diverted from Philadelphia, New York and Newark, said Tom Sullivan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
The snow that blanketed the region was part of a massive storm caused by a particularly potent form of what meteorologists call an Alberta clipper.
