No one seemed to be expecting the scattered snow squalls that fell yesterday to be as intense as they were. Suddenly the holidays were over, it really was winter and we simply weren’t ready.
Because the ground is cold and the snow is sticking, we found ourselves with a weather and traffic event isolated to certain areas but certainly serious for folks in those areas.
First, the Interstate 270 corridor from Germantown westward had thee accident as soon as the snow began falling. Two involved vehicles overturning.
Later in the evening, it was the Interstate 66 corridor west of Haymarket and Interstate 81 in the Winchester area that were most effected.
No matter how prepared we think we are or how advanced our weather forecasting methods have become, we seem to get taken by surprise at least once every winter season. Perhaps part of our lack of preparedness came from that holiday hangover most of us felt yesterday — we just weren’t quite ready to get back to reality.
Lets hope that we woke up a bit now and are more alert and prepared for the next event. It was easy to believe winter wasn’t coming this year with the unusually warm weather, but winter has certainly now arrived.
Fortunately, yesterday’s weather did not effect the entire D.C. metro area, but certainly the folks that were effected did not feel so fortunate.