Ice fell Saturday night because air temperatures were relatively high, Guyer said. By yesterday morning, air temperatures began to drop, and the ice changed to snow, he said. The storm was supposed to end by noon, but it lingered.
The Virginia Department of Transportation sent out about 350 trucks at 7 p.m. Saturday to begin treating Northern Virginia's major roads. By 7 a.m. yesterday, "we ramped it up a little bit" and increased the number of trucks to 500, said Ryan Hall, a VDOT spokesman. The state agency can mobilize as many as 1,800 trucks and plows in Northern Virginia.
In Reston, a couple walks through the fresh blanket. A well-timed but messy storm coated the region in ice and then dumped up to four inches of snow over the weekend.
(Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
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"It's a light snow," he said, compared with last weekend's storm, when 1,300 VDOT vehicles were on Northern Virginia roads. "There's hardly any accumulation on the roads, just slush. We got a nice jump-start on it."
By yesterday afternoon, major roads were clear, Hall said.
"But you can't get everything, especially on bridges and overpasses," he said. "Everybody has to realize it's not a dry summer day -- it's icy and there's slush, and it's going to accumulate on the tires."
Both Reagan National and Dulles International airports reported weather-related delays and cancellations, said Tara Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
Crews with Dominion Virginia Power were bracing for a major ice storm and all the troubles that go with it -- "hundreds of thousands of people without power," said spokeswoman Daisy Pridgen. But only about 6,000 of Virginia Power's 2.2 million customers lost electricity during the storm, she said.
State police reported 90 accidents on Northern Virginia's major roads yesterday through 11 a.m., a spokeswoman said. That compares with about four or five accidents for the same period on a typical Sunday.
There were no major injuries, she said. "They were mostly fender benders."
Authorities in the District and suburban Maryland reported no major problems.
The District dispatched slightly fewer than 200 trucks and plows, said Rice, the spokesman. He said the crews began work Saturday evening and were likely to continue salting into this morning.
Staff writer Maria Glod contributed to this report.
