A Blanket for Some, a Pounding for Others

By Carol Morello and Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 13, 2006

Joel Betts got out of bed every hour through the night just to watch the snow fall, his anticipation growing with every flake as the 35-year-old banker imagined the snowman he would build.

He built it yesterday morning, 10 feet tall, in the middle of Dupont Circle, spraying black paint for buttons and blue paint for eyes and topping it off with a friend's baseball cap.

But daybreak brought anger, not joy, for Tami Powstenko, shivering in her Silver Spring home as the temperature slid lower by the hour. Two trees weighed down with snow had toppled a power line leading to her house. No lights, no heat, no water. Starting at 7:30 a.m., and well into the afternoon, she kept calling her utility company's emergency number. On a day when more than 300,000 customers also had lost their electricity, all she got was a busy signal.

As Betts and Powstenko illustrate, where people live in the region determined whether the weekend snowstorm was an occasion for fun or frustration, snowmen or repairmen.

The first big-league storm of an otherwise temperate winter dumped heavy, wet snow on metropolitan Washington. It was the kind of snow that was great for making snowballs and for sledding -- and for sending tree limbs crashing into power lines.

Despite two days of insistent warnings that a major storm was on the way, when it actually came there was almost an element of surprise to it. Most people had gone to bed Saturday night to a combination of rain and snow that wasn't sticking to the ground. They awoke to a world transformed.

How much varied widely. In most places, the snowfall ranged between 8 and 14 inches. But in Alexandria, only 6.2 inches was measured, while 17 inches fell in parts of Montgomery County. Howard County was one of the worst hit, with more than 21 inches of snow recorded in Columbia.

The storm ranked -- just barely -- among the Top 20 ever in the region, said Jim Lee, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. But that ranking is based on the snowfall measured at Reagan National Airport, which was eight inches.

"It's all local," Lee said. "For areas that got 18, 19, 22 inches of snow, it probably ranks in the Top 5."

And, as is often the case in a region where even a light coating of snow can shut down government and commerce, major school systems announced last night that today would be a school-less snow day. Among them were Montgomery, Prince George's and Howard counties in Maryland and Fairfax, Prince William, Stafford, Loudoun, Fauquier and Spotsylvania counties in Virginia. Two-hour delays are in effect for Charles, St. Mary's and Calvert counties in Maryland and the cities of Manassas, Manassas Park and Fredericksburg in Virginia. D.C. and Falls Church schools announced a two-hour delay for students.

Federal government offices will open on time.

A sense of playfulness dominated a day when people did not have to worry about getting to work or school. And many churches decided to cancel services. Even on a Sunday, the effect was to mute the jarring sounds of everyday life. Bevies of snowmen and snow angels were created. At parks with hills, children screamed with delight as they tried out their Christmas sleds and saucers.

People who had to go places were less enchanted. And in some neighborhoods, the only sound was the scraping of shovels hitting pavement or the whir of snowblowers.

In Columbia, a deep layer of snow covered every surface that was not plowed or shoveled. In the parking lot of the Columbia mall, plows pushed snowdrifts five feet tall into the medians. Cars were dwarfed by high piles of snow covering them like tall hats, while shrubs were all but hidden under snow thicker than a featherbed. Trees bowed toward the roads, laden down by the weight of snow on their limbs.

Cancellations and delays plagued airports. National Airport was shut down until midday. But the region's airports were more accessible than many airports to the north. Dozens of international flights were diverted to Dulles International Airport from the New York City area, where the still-raging storm prevented them from landing.

Most Metro trains ran on normal schedules, despite a brief closure on the Green Line when a tree fell on a track in Maryland near -- where else -- Branch Avenue.

In the District, buses ran on designated emergency routes while tow trucks hauled away parked cars that blocked their way. By the time the city's 20-hour snow emergency was over, about 600 cars had been "relocated" and 1,000 tickets with $250 fines had been written, said Bill Rice, spokesman for the D.C. Department of Transportation. By mid-afternoon, most areas had lifted their snow emergency, allowing police and towing crews to relax their vigilance.

Metro had been preparing for the storm since Friday, said Candace Smith, a spokeswoman for the transit authority. So yesterday morning, workers were busily shoveling parking lots and sprinkling sand across sidewalks and entrances.

Virginia and Maryland highway officials sounded almost chipper, considering a major storm had just passed through.

"All in all, we're looking good here," said Chuck Gischlar, spokesman for Maryland State Highways.

The aplomb might reflect the advance warning and the timing of the storm. Most of the heavy snowfall occurred between midnight and 7 a.m. Police departments had braced for a day of pileups and crashes, but most found empty streets and little to do.

"The calls I keep getting are from people who want their power back on," said R.J. Greenwood, a Falls Church police dispatcher. "Unfortunately, that's up to the power company."

Outages were reported in virtually every part of the region.

Dominion Virginia Power had 103,000 customers who lost their electricity, but it had restored power to all but 13,000 as of late last night, the utility said on its Web site. Baltimore Gas and Electric figures showed 60,000 customers without electricity last night. At one point the figure was 97,000. Pepco had more than 100,000 outages reported, but all but 11,900 had power back by 10 p.m.

Affected areas were the size of small- to medium-size towns. Among the places bearing the brunt were Springfield, where 23,000 customers lost power at one point, Anne Arundel County with 61,000 outages and Prince George's with 30,000 outages. There were 11,000 outages in Alexandria and Arlington County and 10,500 near Fairfax City.

The figure for Anne Arundel was given as 59,700 on the Baltimore Gas and Electric Web site late last night, but that does not mean that power was not restored to thousands of homes. While repairs are being made, new outages are often reported.

With temperatures set to dip below freezing during the night, Baltimore Gas and Electric expected more tree limbs to break under the extra weight of the ice, causing more outages, spokesman Linda Foy said.

The storm also knocked out some phone service, but it was unclear to how many. Verizon's Mid-Atlantic region received "several hundred reports" from customers who lost service because of truncated wires, spokesman Harry Mitchell said. "We fully anticipate there are more out there, but they have not called," he added.

Despite some inconveniences, it was possible for just a day to remember the magic of being a kid in a world with snow to jump in and slide over and melt in your mouth.

At one of the area's more popular sledding destinations, the hill at the Masonic Temple in Alexandria, dozens of families arrived with children armed with the latest in advanced sledding technology.

Children whooshed down the steep hill in all manner of aerodynamic foam and polyester concoctions, many emblazoned with such puzzling names as Z-Comp 130, Freeride 110 and Laserluge.

Dressed in goofy snow hats with clownlike horns, the youngsters acted as if they had no fear. They raced down the hill with grown-ups and small saplings directly in front of them. Some of them gained enough velocity that they almost landed in the street.

Taking a break on the top of the hill, Brandon Attiliis, 11, boasted that his snowboard was better than a mere sled and explained how he could do 180s and 360s.

"I've seen him with my own eyes," attested his friend Dylan Scott. "He's really good. Better than me."

Attiliis strapped his feet onto his board and rushed down the hill. Halfway down, he wiped out, but Dylan was quick to support his pal's skills. "All these wacky sleds," he said. "Some of them don't work."

Staff writers Petula Dvorak, Allison Klein, Theola S. Labbe, Allan Lengel and Martin Weil contributed to this report.