This winter's first storm ended up as a case of the haves vs. the have-nots across the Washington region: Some people had piles of snow yesterday. Some people didn't.
Which category you were in depended largely on which side of an invisible line you found yourself. The region's varied topography and temperatures meant that the same storm that dumped nine inches of snow on Damascus in northern Montgomery County dropped barely an inch on Reagan National Airport.
Traffic backs up in Loudoun County behind a car that didn't make it up a snowy hill. Given a hand by others, the driver decided to reverse course.
(Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)
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"That's what makes it so hard to forecast," said National Weather Service meteorologist Barbara Watson. "There's just an incredible gradient with the temperature. Just change the temperature a couple of degrees here and there and, boy, what a difference you get."
The second act of the early season storm is expected to bring three to six more inches of snow to the Washington area before the flakes stop falling this afternoon. The culprit is cold, dry air blowing down from the north and combining with a low-pressure system off the mid-Atlantic coast, said Weather Service forecasters.
Yesterday's snow seemed more like two storms. Commuters driving into the District from Sterling, Gaithersburg and other points west looked as if they'd rolled in from Anchorage, the roofs of their cars covered with a half-foot or more of snow. Residents of Alexandria, Arlington and points east had barely any snow to clear.
The storm forced area school officials to grapple with a perennial problem: the need to cancel classes for an entire county when only half of it was snowbound.
"Our transportation system is a countywide system involving children transported from Damascus to Silver Spring, from Rockville to Poolesville, from Potomac to Burtonsville," said Montgomery County schools spokesman Brian Porter. " . . . The worst weather situation will decide conditions for the entire county, and frankly, most of the county had significant snowfall, very abruptly."
Students had the day off in Montgomery, Howard and Frederick counties. Schools in Prince William, Loudoun, Stafford and Fauquier counties also were closed. Fairfax County schools opened two hours late, while it was business as usual for students in the District, Alexandria and Arlington.
Metrorail weathered the storm just fine, as did area power companies, which reported few snow-related outages. Extra utility crews are in place to deal with today's weather, but, said Pepco's Robert Dobkin, "our problems will be mostly with drivers skidding into poles."
Hoping to prevent just that, Jennifer Skrotdzki, 29, hoisted four 50-pound bags of beach sand, marked "Imported from the Caribbean," into the back of her SUV outside the Germantown Home Depot. It was ballast.
"It's going to stay in here so I don't slide around," she said. She found seven inches of snow on the patio of her Germantown home in the morning.
"We came here from Texas, during last winter," Skrotdzki said, rolling her eyes as she slammed the tailgate. "I've heard this one is supposed to be even worse."
Area road crews spent much of yesterday clearing the snow and slush that had been plowed onto shoulders from the morning storm to create room for the next round of snow. Maryland crews were especially busy in Howard and Baltimore counties, which had the most morning snow.
"That lull [between storms] was a big plus for us," said Kellie Boulware, a spokeswoman for the Maryland State Highway Administration. "It gave us a chance to get out and get the lanes passable."
