Snow that buried Va. isn’t going anywhere

Snow paralyzed transportation in Virginia yesterday.

And it's likely to stay frozen for a while.

"It might be Tuesday before we get into neighborhood roads" to plow deep snow that fell on the Old Dominion yesterday, said Britt Drewes, a Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "We're going to work as fast as we can."

Area snowfall yesterday reached 14 inches in Henrico County's Lakeside, 13 inches in Short Pump, 12.8 inches in Studley in Hanover County, 11.4 inches in Richmond, 11 inches in Chesterfield County and 9.5 inches at Richmond International Airport, the National Weather Service said. Across the state, unusually high snowfalls included 9 inches in Virginia Beach.

From one end to the other, snow buried the state. Snowfall rates of an inch an hour were common during the storm that tapered by evening, the weather service said.

"For Virginia, for the entire state to get snow is relatively unusual," said meteorologist Larry Brown with the Wakefield Weather Forecast Office. If the weather is cold enough to produce snow in Hampton Roads, most storms are not also large enough to engulf Northern Virginia as well, he said.

The weather in central Virginia today and tomorrow will be frigid; later in the week, temperatures will stay below freezing at night and struggle only into the 40s by day as cold high pressure builds into the area.

"Certainly through Wednesday, the amount of melting you're going to see is minimal," Brown said.

Without warmer weather to melt the snow, street and road snow-removal crews will have to work longer.

"It's going to make our job harder," Drewes said. And, she said, "we're going to be more concerned about black ice forming" as roads refreeze after sundown.

The storm caused hundreds of auto accidents, interrupted electric service, slowed traffic to a crawl, canceled almost all flights at Richmond International Airport, stopped every bus running through Richmond's Greyhound terminal -- stranding about 160 passengers -- and halted most of Amtrak's passenger-rail service in Virginia.

Marnel Francois, 37, escaped earthquake-stricken Haiti only to be trapped at Richmond's bus station.

He said the earthquake took the lives of nine members of his family and two children he thought of as family. He made it to the Dominican Republic and then Miami before catching a bus, hoping to get home to New Jersey.

"What can we do?" he said with resignation.

At Richmond International, more than 100 flights were scrubbed, or about 80 percent of the airport's Saturday service. Ten more flights had been canceled for today. "That list is going to grow," airport spokesman Troy Bell said.

From 6 p.m. Friday through 5 p.m. yesterday, the Virginia State Police statewide worked 1,285 traffic crashes; 1,200 of those involved damage to vehicles. There were 231 wrecks in the agency's Richmond division, second to the 423 reported in the Hampton Roads region. No fatalities were reported.

On Interstate 81 in Shenandoah County, a string of multivehicle wrecks involving jackknifed tractor-trailers sent four people to the hospital.

During the pre-Christmas snowstorm, state police responded to more than 16,000 calls for service statewide in a 78-hour period.

This time, road conditions throughout the state were moderately to severely bad, VDOT said, with significant accumulations of snow on most roads.

In at least one case, drivers took matters into their own hands. On Chamberlayne Avenue in Henrico, the entrance to Interstate 95 south was blocked by high snow until several motorists got out, pulled shovels out of their vehicles and started clearing a path.

Travel across the area was difficult, with jaunts that usually take only minutes lasting an hour or more. Driving across the region -- whether from Colonial Heights north or from western Henrico to downtown -- became day trips for motorists who went against the advice to stay off the roads.

Money-squeezed VDOT has budgeted $79 million for snow removal and an additional $14 million for contractor snow-clearance work, Drewes said. The department aims to have all roads passable within 48 hours after a storm ends, though that's not likely this week.

Crews first clear interstates, primary roads and major secondary roads linking localities, fire stations, employment hubs, military bases, schools, hospitals and other key public facilities. Then VDOT treats less traveled secondary roads and subdivision streets.

Gov. Bob McDonnell "will be monitoring the situation closely to ensure that every necessary action is taken to get roads cleared as quickly as possible," said the governor's spokesman, Tucker Martin.

Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones declared a local state of emergency yesterday. McDonnell had earlier declared a state of emergency as the storm approached to ease the marshalling of state resources.

The city closed the Boulevard Bridge and Broad Street between 14th and 25th streets, deeming them too treacherous for travel yesterday.

Dominion Virginia Power said the storm had disrupted electric service to about 33,000 customers statewide. Company crews had restored power to all but about 700 subscribers by late afternoon.

While its buses operated on a normal Saturday routine, the region's GRTC public-transit system reduced its specialized transportation service to dialysis and medical trips only. That service uses smaller vehicles such as vans and offers curb-to-curb transport, a challenge on snow-packed side streets, said John M. Lewis Jr., GRTC Transit System's CEO.

Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or .

Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or .

The Associated Press contributed to this report.