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Pre-storm Banter Thread


WxUSAF

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They should have had delayed opening today... I am looking at the hill my house is at the bottom of and scratching my head...

On a weather note, LWX winter page showing DC metro most likely 20" and max 22" - seems like a bit of a tight call between percentiles. Wouldn't the Max potential be more than that, or are they being capped some sort of calculation- such as climo?

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They should have had delayed opening today... I am looking at the hill my house is at the bottom of and scratching my head...

On a weather note, LWX winter page showing DC metro most likely 20" and max 22" - seems like a bit of a tight call between percentiles. Wouldn't the Max potential be more than that, or are they being capped some sort of calculation- such as climo?

The advance preparations for 20" probably are not much different for folks than 30" (or at least shouldn't be).

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They should have had delayed opening today... I am looking at the hill my house is at the bottom of and scratching my head...

On a weather note, LWX winter page showing DC metro most likely 20" and max 22" - seems like a bit of a tight call between percentiles. Wouldn't the Max potential be more than that, or are they being capped some sort of calculation- such as climo?

 

considering almost every model had more than that last night, including the 0z EURO, for DC, I would imagine those totals might be increased later this morning - maybe not the forecast (most likely) but the max should be much higher - would put it around 28/30 inches if it was me.

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I wonder if OPM/local schools will shut down tomorrow.  I feel like 4-7pm start time might tempt them to be open. 

I would think they would not shut down.  OPM I mean.  Unless they want give people time to finish preparing.  Being Friday a lot of people might just take off anyway.  Schools seem like they would just close.  we shall see

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I would think they would not shut down.  OPM I mean.  Unless they want give people time to finish preparing.  Being Friday a lot of people might just take off anyway.  Schools seem like they would just close.  we shall see

 

Just considering what happened last night, if snow started a little earlier they would risk stranding thousands of people for a long time.  Thinking they might be spooked and call it.

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Fx Co schools decided to close today.  sigh.  1" of snow

Just got back from a walk. Main roads here in McLean are still pretty bad. Some melting from traffic. No evidence of treating except commercial lots. Yes, this is totally lame, but our school had a bus crash in a storm last year and I thought there would be a public execution by a mob of parents.

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Did the Columbia-to-SE DC commute at 5am.  I-95 in HoCo had icy spots but was hard to tell in dark.  I-95 north of Laurel had some major delays in spots with emergency vehicles and traffic/accident/ice/abandoned cars issues. 

 

Traffic moved approx. 55mph on average on I-95 southbound.  B-W Pkwy was weird.  Steady traffic moving at only about 35-40mph, no accidents but about 30 cars sitting on B-W Pkwy roadsides between I-95/B-W Pkwy exit and NY Ave/Kenilworth Ave split.

 

Normal commute at 5am is approx. 45 mins; today was maybe 55 mins, so not all that bad.

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How is it possible that people were stuck 12 hours due to 1 inch of snow? I grew up near NYC and never remember that happening. Do we just have less capacity to treat roads?

Perhaps it is a blend of poor road treatment, high traffic volume, and too many incompetent drivers with the later weighing heaviest.
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How is it possible that people were stuck 12 hours due to 1 inch of snow?  I grew up near NYC and never remember that happening.   Do we just have less capacity to treat roads?

I mentioned this earlier but from what I've seen they do a terrible job of pre-treating except main highways. People were absolutely sliding. Not just the usual rear wheel drive culprits, but some AWD vehicles too. I was in the Detroit suburbs a number of years ago before a 8'inch storm or so and they pre-treated even neighborhood roads. Driving the highways was slow(about 35 or so) but it moved. Very few accidents, usually people who went speeding by earlier.

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How is it possible that people were stuck 12 hours due to 1 inch of snow? I grew up near NYC and never remember that happening. Do we just have less capacity to treat roads?

They don't pre treat roads properly here. They use chemical spray which just doesn't seem to work nearly as well as rock salt.

They didn't pretreat at all yesterday.

I did the drive from silver spring to Baltimore today and it was mostly good but the icy spots were very bad. Even with 4wd i was sliding a bit. Added about 10 mins to the commute but i avoided the beltway and took 29 most of the way.

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How is it possible that people were stuck 12 hours due to 1 inch of snow?  I grew up near NYC and never remember that happening.   Do we just have less capacity to treat roads?

 

I think DC area in general still operates on a highway/Metro system that was built when like 3 million people lived in the region. Today, there are at least 6  million. That snow last night didn't even start until the later half of the rush hour. Think what would have happened had it started at 4 p.m. instead of when it did, I think 7 p.m. Plus, I imagine traffic was worse cause lots of people who didn't need to drive rushed out to try to prepare for weekend storm and buy groceries. They get caught up with the commuters and the unexpectedly icy conditions.

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If .7" of snow is doing this to traffic, can you imagine what 18"+ will do?

 

I got to assume that governors of Maryland and Virginia will likely impose some sort of statewide travel ban starting tomorrow night. That is what NYC did for that blizzard that wasn't last year, and I think governor of Massachusetts banned travel during a few storms last year.

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How is it possible that people were stuck 12 hours due to 1 inch of snow? I grew up near NYC and never remember that happening. Do we just have less capacity to treat roads?

They just didn't treat anything in this state. My drive home from DC to Calvert was just as bad. I don't know if they didn't pay attention to nws advisories or were just too caught up in preparing for the big storm.

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