Winter Storm Hits

It started slow around 6pm. That's when the first shot was taken. After that it really took off. This is probably worse then any of the storms last year. Those were mostly over night. This one hit right at rush hour. And rush hour was anything but a rush. It took people hours upon hours to just get out of the district.

Here's an assessment of what was going on in some areas last night from one of the Capital Weather Gang from the Post:

8:10 pm: A very impressive band of snow with rates of 1-2" in an hour has been raking eastern Montgomery county, northwest D.C. and northern Prince George's county. This band should move off in the next hour. Still, moderate snow will continue after that and snow may not finally taper off until between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. from southwest to northeast across the region. With rapidly developing low pressure systems, the snow sometimes continues longer than modeled. This happened with the Snoverkill storm last year on February 10-11. The longer duration means high end totals, particularly west of the city.

Winter Storm Hits, Part II

These pictures were taken around 10pm or so. It piled up very fast. It was also very wet and very heavy. Power lines sagged. In fact I was looking out my front door and I saw sparks coming off of one of the power poles that are across the street from me.

My lights dimmed a few times but I was lucky my power stayed on. Other's weren't so lucky:

With rumbles of thunder more common to a summer squall, winter descended in force on the Washington region late Wednesday, icing the area down before switching to snow, extending rush hour to an agonizing night-long crawl and turning out the lights for hundreds of thousands as power lines snapped.

Though the sky was clear, dawn brought an unwelcome chill to about 422,000 households without power in the region served by Pepco, Dominion Virginia and BGE.

Winter Storm Hits, Part III

For awhile it seems like it was more like snow rain than actual snow. The snow is so wet and so heavy it's caused chaos throughout the DC area. It made the commute for some people last hours and hours:

Denise Borders spent nearly 13 grueling hours on the Parkway-- "just sitting for hours. Literally. Sitting, not moving"--without food, without a bathroom, without sleep. There were trees down and people whose cars got stuck trying to turn around and get off the parkway, Borders said. But for most of the drivers on the road, the snow was less of a problem than the complete gridlock that enveloped them.