What a blizzard! Power out at daughter's in King George. Ours flickered a few times but so far so good. Northern Neck reporting in.

Powers out inside the beltway… appears to be wrapping up, but there’s a good 8-10 inches on the ground.

Looking at 4" and still coming down quite a bit in lunenburg county. Makes for a slushy mud hole at work tomorrow

Power is out in most of Louisa County and they have closed several of the main roads like portions of 522 and 33.

It is still coming down strong here with probably about 8-10 so far and only going to get worse when we hit 11 degrees tonight.

Got a lady sitting in the ditch in front of my house and AAA told her sorry no trucks!

Hanover County off of the Atlee exit. Maybe 4 inches , power is on . My concern is our trees are weighted down with that wet snow/ice and I have seen plenty of downed branches.

Stone Ridge neighborhood of Aldie in Loudoun County.

2 to 4 inches.  Schools closed... kids having fun, as expected.  

ETA - construction job site was closed today.

Screw it, here's a pic from nearby:

South Stafford/King George area-- 12" of snow on the deck. Power's been out for some time now. Propane logs are on and the camp stove is in the kitchen because I'm too lazy to get the generator hooked up. Be safe out there.

Looked like 5" or 6" in my part of Nova.  Biggest issue is how wet and sticky it is.  Snowblower worked fine, but it definitely let me know it was working.  Also, lots of branches and shrubs collapsing under the weight.  Tried to get out and gently shake off the ones that are the most likely to not recover...and that I care about.  Guess time will tell.  I've lost some in past years with this type of snow.

Like a foot in Falmouth. No power since before noon. I have a fireplace going which is keeping one room okay.

One plow, no dominion trucks. Neighbor lost a tree

Got about 7 inches here in Reston.  Heavy wet shit too, so I ended up with the Redbud tree in my front yard splitting in half and laying across the sidewalk and driveway.  Fuck.  My late wife picked that tree from the nursery and it was really good looking.

Oh, that hurts.  Sorry to hear it brother.

Perhaps you can take part of a branch inside and dry it out, so you can make something with it later.

Falmouth also.  Power came back on about an hour ago.  We got 12”

Got 11 inches were i am in Louisa Co. Just  south of the town. Power went out at 8:30 am and still out. Trees down, one punched a hole in the wifes car. Thank god for a gas fireplace and generator. Hope power comes back tomorrow but I have my doubts. REC has a mess on their hands. Can still hear trees snpping in the woods.

My buddy’s brother in Ruckersville got at least a foot. We only got a dusting here on the south side and most of it has melted already or turned to ice.

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Waited till it quit snowing and the sun came out before I went out of the house yesterday.

Just a small bit of slush on the sidewalk, spotty here and there on the gravel driveway.  One of the neighbors decided he needed to fire up the tractor and push that inch of slush off the road in front of the houses.  Thought I might get to try out the new tires on the 435iX but not really enough snow to get a good test.

No power flickers, not one.  My youngest son lives about 12 miles SW of us and his wife told him the power flickered several times out there near the Ameila County line on the west end of Chesterfield County.

Maybe two inches on the grassy areas.  Four inches on the deck/steps where they were cooler than the ground.

Not bad at all right here a couple miles from Chesterfield Court House.

Hope they get the power back on for those who lost it.

Just heard I95 is closed (30 miles of it north and south bound??) up closer to DC.  It's bad enough on that road when it rains, let alone when it snows.  The news said parts of I64 are closed eastbound and east of Richmond.

I-95 looks like a disaster.  Typical.

It once took me 5 1/2 hours to get from D.C. to Dumfries
because I didn't want to lose money by leaving work early.

I'll never make that mistake again.  

I was supposed to drive from the Winchester area to Williamsburg thru Richmond on Monday, but of course, I postponed. Now I need to do it today, and all of my routes that I take to avoid 95 normally are bad, going thru Culpeper. Rt 522 from Culpeper to I64. Rt 33 off Rt 522 to Richmond. I'm considering taking Rt 15 from Culpeper thru Orange and Gordonsville to hit I64 east thru Richmond onward to Williamsburg.

It sounds like VDOT has dropped the ball big time between Kings Dominion and NOtVA, lots of people stranded.

VDOT had a huge fleet of dump trucks/snow plows that used to stay on top of this, now they have to rely on contractors that may not even have enough drivers to run their normal operations, let alone snow plow duties.

NCDOT still has their fleet of plows (for now) and when it snows in the part of NC I travel about in they attack the snow with great gusto.

Finally got out of the house and to my GF’s parents’ house that has power.

Already had about 4” on the ground around 0800 so I went out to shovel. This was the view out the garage door:
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Depth perception in the photo isn’t good, but that limb was right against the door and normally is standing about 4-5’ higher. All the tree limbs cracking reminded me of the blizzard that swamped Omaha in the 90s. Thought I might get super unlucky and have a branch take me out.

Power went out around 0900 or so. Tree limbs were laying down on them or outright snapping and taking the lines down. Luckily I hadn’t taken all my camping stuff to the storage unit so I had my Coleman stove and Jetboil.
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Watched trees go down while I was cooking and managed to keep us fed all day. Had more than enough firewood to warm us up until we went to bed. It was 52 when we laid down and was 48 when we woke up this morning.

Her parents had tried an evac op around 1700 yesterday but every road was jammed with crashed 18-wheelers or other fools and they cancelled. I got us up at 0545 to hopefully drop her and the cat off at her parents and then figure out how to get to work for my first day. Neighborhood roads weren’t bad besides trees being down. The 2-lane road to the freeway was hairier: trees hanging into the road from snow weight, a few abandoned vehicles, and a steep hill to navigate down.

One we got on the freeway we got about 1/4 mile before seeing taillights not moving. Stopped before the cut through in case I needed to turn around and walked about a 1/4 mile to see what was going on. There was about 4-6” of compacted snow/ice on the road and a tractor trailer had slid partway into the median. Another 7-8 trucks had just stopped and were too close together to allow smaller vehicles to slalom around them.

Making the simple decision made me the hero for folks that had been there over an hour already: I’m going eastbound in the westbound lanes until I can get around. Took about a minute to get past the jammed trucks and back on the right side of the road. Saw that the on-ramps to I-95 north and south were blocked off, much of everything else was at least plowed. Got her and the cat here around 0830.

Now I’m deciding if and how I can get to work. I’m not sure how bad anything is up north, but from the news I’ve finally seen it doesn’t look that great further north.

ETA: Northbound 95 doesn’t look closed except here in Fredericksburg. How bad is it further north? Don’t think I’ll go in as I don’t want to get stuck coming back south at 1700.

Full 24 hours without power inside the Beltway… lots of tree branches down.  

Clearly neither VDOT nor Dominion had any extra crews on standby for this one.  Not that anyone was really expecting it, but still.

I-95 is still shut down around Fredericksburg with people stranded for nearly 20 hours.  Our noble governor was just on TV saying he had no idea when things may open up again.  We have an appointment in Richmond tonight and a flight out of RIC bright and early tomorrow.  I'm thinking about trying Route 1 - Jeff Davis Hwy - southbound until we can get on I-95 around Bass Pro.  Anyone been on Rt 1 today?

Gold.  Solid gold.  

Dominion could've probably afforded a couple more linemen with what they donated to Terry

I guess Scott Rhodes does not realize Youngkin does not get sworn in until Jan. 15th. He can't do anything until his term starts. Some peoples ignorance is funny.

Can you get a cutting from it to graft or replant?

We had a solid 14 inches in North Stafford, at least judging by what's on our deck. Most of it was extremely wet and heavy, with maybe the last 3 inches being the light fluffy stuff. Had multiple trees split in half in the yard, with one blocking one of the garage doors, and haven't heard from our landlord in over 24 hours as to how he wants to handle it. Unfortunately, all of my preps and big tools for these types of situations are still in storage in WI, they would have come in very handy the last couple of days. We lost power very early yesterday and finally got it back around 4:30pm today. Verizon cellular data was completely out during that time as well, except for around 2:30am this morning it worked for a bit. Otherwise I could only send basic SMS and sometimes make a voice call that was spotty at best.

I decided to go out last night for a little drive around the neighborhood to see how bad it was, and took our Grand Cherokee with new snow tires. The amount of people driving around after 10pm in vehicles that were completely inappropriate for the conditions was amazing. Both low slung sedans and even pickup trucks with bald tires were sliding sideways everywhere and getting stuck. All of the side roads had huge ruts in them and even in Offroad 2 mode I was still scraping the bottom of the Jeep at times, I have no idea what some of those people were thinking. Mine Rd and Garrisonville Rd were both plowed ok but pretty much sheer ice by 10pm, all of the side roads and parking lots were really, really bad. I had to get out and help a guy in a Focus that had slid sideways and was blocking the entire road back into my subdivision. Also every single gas station had power but wasn't pumping any gas, and every single pump had a vehicle waiting with lines wrapped around the gas station. I assume those were all people coming off I95 running on fumes.

Good times!

12 here. No power. Been clearing trees and limbs off the driveway all day to get out. Wood stove rocking.

Beaverdam in Hanover here; lost power Monday late afternoon, still out. REC says it’s their biggest outage in their history.  Don’t like the sounds of that.
Trees pulled power lines down across all area roads .
Front porch stacked with firewood , main genny crapped out (rebuilding the carb now) back up genny running woodstove blower. Fridge and freezer repacked into coolers packed in snow .
Staging 5gal buckets of pool water in tub to flush toilets until main genny fires up .
Pulled a couple batteries out of the golf cart so we can watch movies on the iPad

Neighbor said they were heating water in a saucepan in the coals in the fireplace . I asked him how many times did he walk past his grill bringing in dead tree branches for his fire.     His look on his face was priceless.

I live outside Quantico, power was out for about 18 hours.  Traffic in the area was horrific, folks were jammed up on 95 for 24 hours, no snowplows, no treatment.  The stupid fucking VDOT cunt in charge for this area was whining how they "didn't expect such a heavy snow, it was raining, I'm on my period!!!"

Was this incompetent response Northam's big "FUCK YOU!" to VA voters?

I’m sorry to hear this, I hope you can do a cutting and save the tree.

We had 14” where I am in north Stafford, heavy and wet. Power has been out since early Monday and supposedly it will be back on by this evening. The house is all natural gas so we can cook, shower and have the gas fireplace. I broke out the genny, and snow blower for its once very five year  workout. And yes, I did the neighborhood and am loaning out the genny for the snow clueless neighbors.

The crazy part is I was installing a rear sway bar on the Tundra Sunday and it was 62 degrees. I swore I heard the weather guy say we going to get a “dusting” the next day so I went to bed with no worries. Up a 4am and it was light snow but at 6am it was furious.

South Stafford-Power came back on late last night. Had to go to northern Va. this morning, Main roads good, some side roads still had tree blockage on one lane. long lines at the gas pumps. Giant on 218 had no line. Propane place on Rt 1 (by Drew middle school) had line down Rt 1. if you need propane a lot of places have the exchange a tank, a lot of people don't think of this. Calling for 2-4" Thursday night. After times like this it's a good idea to review your preps. I had 30 gallons of generator fuel left and plenty of food & water. Stay safe.

Well damn the fuel pump on my generator is crapping the bed and they are saying through the end of the weekend for power restoration here in Louisa. Having to do helicopter patrols just to diagnose the lines since the roads are still impassable in many places.

Now I have to scramble to find at least a kerosene heater to keep from total freezing.

At least I have my folks house to go to who are on a propane generator.

ETA - Our power in north Stafford came back on about 45 minutes ago.

No plan survives first contact. I have a dual Honda generator setup with house hookup. Never used it and I thought Monday would be a great time until I saw a 4' drift in the spot where they would sit and I only had 2 gallons of gas (see previous post about not believing the weather guy). I broke out the Ryobi backup and used it since Monday and it still has half a tank remaining. I got 10 gallons of gas this morning on Rt610, everyone was crowded at the stations by 95 so a short trip down 610 and I had gas in two minutes at the Sheetz.

 

So serene:





A new to me Tundra in its first snow.  

Still no power in Louisa where I am. Had to go to C-ville to get gas for the generator, food, beer and cigars. Good to go for a few more days. Hoping REC gets it fixed by then. Main roads were good but the back roads sucked for the most part. Ready for the next round thur night.

Never lost power and stayed warm as can be. Gotta love wood fireplaces.  I've shoveled enough snow and cut up enough trees to last me through the rest of the year. Internet and TV just came back on.

Pepper your angus. The Wxrisk guy is saying we are in for another 6 inches.

Our power here in North Stafford keeps blipping for a second every few hours, started last night around 5pm, but thankfully has stayed on since we got it back late Tuesday afternoon. We had family spend the night last night that live down by 17 and are still without power, they were told it could be out until late today or tomorrow still, just in time for more snow!

REC is playing games now with their outage map. There is no one along my stretch of 522 for about 5 miles that has any electric on a major feed line for the county. Yesterday they had it listed as over 500 affected putting it up near the top of the outages. Then sometime last night they updated the map and changed every single person along that route to individual outages of 10 or less dropping everyone on the priory list.

How do they prioritize during outages? Businesses then residential, blocks / areas. etc.?

Its by distribution substation and number of customers attached, normally. But they're stuck in the same shit everyone else is, so before they power a circuit back up they need to make sure the line to the next substation is clear, no trees on it, etc. You can't do the "I turned it on, the breaker popped again" with > 1000V on the line.

He always goes worst case scenario.  A few years ago, he was the only one that called a major storm we got and has been mostly over predicting since.

I can’t argue with that.

Tell me more about this little bugger, What did it power and how do you like it?

Been staying in downtown Fredericksburg since Tuesday. Checked the house each day after work. Today I saw REC listed crews working in Lake Wilderness so I hoped power would be fully restored. Saw lights on at some houses and other completely blacked out. Got to the house and had exterior lights going but when I got in and flipped some switches the LED bulbs would barely light. Thought maybe it was just the house still being in the 50s giving them issues. Figured I’d turn on the heater on the electric fireplace and it blacked out half the house. I guess they got enough power running to folks to get some things running but not 100%.

Well that was a complete bust. Only got some flurries.

Got about 2 inches overnight. Daughter got power back in King George last night.