Snow still taking up lanes. This is near the Silver Spring Transit Center. #wtop pic.twitter.com/elQYJ4PjRe
— Nick Iannelli (@NickWTOP) January 28, 2016Crews working hard to clear the St. Louis area of Loudoun County. pic.twitter.com/ez2MkPGJif
— VDOT Northern VA (@VaDOTNOVA) January 26, 2016Good to see the crews from Connecticut are here I knew it wouldn't be long. And FYI 29 @ 15 coming from Warrenton is temporarily closed while they clean up real quick. (TV)
Posted by PWC Scanner Bums on Wednesday, January 27, 2016
WASHINGTON — With half-plowed streets and towering snow piles that screen oncoming traffic, road conditions still haven’t returned to normal four days after last weekend’s crippling snowfall.
Residential streets are all at least passable in Prince George’s, Montgomery and Arlington counties and in areas served by the Virginia Department of Transportation, officials say. And now the focus is on improving driving conditions.
“We’ll get back to normal as quick as we can,” said Montgomery County spokesman Patrick Lacefield.
Snow removal crews however were out in full force Thursday to widen lanes, move snow out of turn lanes and shoulders and improving visibility at corners and intersections throughout the region. Local officials are also targeting sidewalks and are beginning to enforce snow removal ordinances.
Drivers were hampered again Thursday morning by disappearing lanes, half lanes, mounds of snow that obstructed their view of cross traffic and of course snow removal crews.
Traffic crawled along Massachusetts Avenue in Bethesda Thursday morning because of reduced lanes that forced through traffic to wait for turning vehicles, who would normally have their own lane. River Road drivers were slowed by a series of trucks clearing a snow-covered lane.
Many side streets were still too narrow to allow two-way traffic requiring drivers to stop and wait for approaching vehicles to pass. Icy spots and frozen slush didn’t help.
In D.C., police and public works crews were closing city blocks — one at a time — so that dump trucks and front loaders could clear out the snow and haul it off to RFK Stadium.
In Virginia, VDOT crews and contractors were pushing, dumping and blowing snow into highway medians. Industrial-sized snowblowers were put to work along with dump trucks, bobcats and even bulldozers.
Crews were also tackling gravel roads in Loudoun County — a project that requires front loaders to scoop and dump snow, which is too heavy and thick for pickup or dump trucks to push, said Ellen Kamilakis, VDOT spokeswoman.
High traffic secondary roads like Sunrise Valley in Reston and U.S. 50 in Fairfax County are also being targeted. Wednesday night, a pack of 20 front loaders were sent into Tysons Corner to open up lanes after the evening rush hour, Kamilakis said.
But for residents who want more than just an icy, rutted road to exit their addition, they are out of luck.
VDOT crews and contractors won’t clear subdivision and neighborhood streets curb to curb, she said.
Montgomery County was focusing on widening lanes on residential streets, removing snow piles at intersections and “getting streets down to bare pavement,” Lacefield said.
“We had a very good plow day today because the temperatures were pretty good,” he said. But there is so much snow it has to be hauled away even from residential areas.
He urged drivers to continue to be cautious as they negotiate the still snow-clogged roads as lanes could disappear quickly.
“Stay alert. Take some time. Be patient,” he said.
Arlington County was focused on improving the safety of primary, secondary and school routes now that all residential streets are at least passable. Residents are asked to report snow piles that are obstructing visibility so they can be cleared, said Meghan McMahon with the county’s Department of Environmental Services.
The county’s sidewalk ordinance is already being enforced and residents can also report walks that need shoveled.
Prince George’s County plans to begin enforcing its sidewalk ordinance for both businesses and residences Friday.
In the meantime, crews continue to clear roads from curb to curb. But on neighborhood streets, residents are responsible for shoveling out their own driveways even if mounds of plowed snow block the entrance, said Paulette Jones, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works and Transportation.
Snow removal work is expected to last through Friday and could continue into the weekend across the region.
The epic snowstorm dumped more than 20 inches throughout the region, leaving closer to 3 feet in parts of Montgomery and Loudoun counties.
That amount of snow coupled with the impact – more than a third of the country felt the storm’s wrath – makes the two-day event a Category 4 storm, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was the sixth worst snow storm in the Northeast and the 14th in the Southeast since 1900.
Airports and interstates were closed. Federal offices closed for several days and schools throughout the region will still be closed Friday.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said that it could be the state’s most expensive storm to date. The state has spent about $175 million since Wednesday to prepare for and respond to the storm, which left no part of the state untouched.
