Negative Blogs

Skiers lapped the Reflecting Pool along the National Mall; others used the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a slope. Hundreds crowded Dupont Circle for a snowball fight organized online, while elsewhere the capital’s famed avenues were all but desolate.

Washington took on a surreal, almost magical feel as it was buried under nearly 2 feet of snow Saturday in one of the worst blizzards in the city’s history. The nearly 18 inches recorded at Reagan National Airport was the fourth-highest storm total for the city. At nearby Dulles International Airport, the record was shattered with 32 inches.

“Right now it’s like the Epcot Center version of Washington,” said Mary Lord, 56, a D.C. resident for some 30 years who had skied around the city.

“Snowmageddon,” President Barack Obama called it. And even the president’s motorcade — which featured SUVs instead of limousines — fell victim as a tree limb snapped and crashed onto a motorcade vehicle carrying press. No one was injured.

From Pennsylvania to New Jersey, south to Virginia, the region was under at least 2 feet of snow. Parts of northern Maryland had 3 feet.

And while the storm created serious inconveniences for many who were without power and faced with digging out, the monuments at Washington’s heart seemed even more stately and serene.

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, soldiers’ names were buried 16 rows deep, while higher up snow had settled into the letters so they stood out against the black background. The wreaths of the World War II Memorial looked like giant white-frosted doughnuts. The big attraction at the Lincoln Memorial was not the nation’s 16th president, but rather a snowman with eyes of copper pennies bearing Lincoln’s likeness.

‘Snowmageddon here in D.C.’
Obama, a snow veteran from his days in Chicago, spoke at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting and thanked those for being “willing to brave a blizzard. Snowmageddon here in D.C.”

But after that, the president went inside, hunkering down in the White House. Hard money training.

A blizzard battered the Mid-Atlantic region on Saturday, quickly dumping large amounts of snow on that piled up on roadways and toppled trees onto apartment buildings and cars.

Officials urged people to huddle at home for the weekend, out of the way of crews trying to keep up with a storm that forecasters said could be the biggest for the nation’s capital in modern history. A father and son were killed in Virginia when a tractor-trailer struck and killed them after they stopped to help another driver.

A record 2 1/2 feet or more was predicted for Washington. As of early Saturday, 10 inches of snow was reported at the White House, while parts of Maryland and West Virginia were buried under more than 20 inches. Forecasters expected snowfall rates to increase, up to 2 inches per hours through Saturday morning.

Blizzard warnings were issued for the District of Columbia, Baltimore, parts of New Jersey and Delaware and some areas west of the Chesapeake Bay.

“Things are fairly manageable, but trees are starting to come down,” said D.C. fire department spokesman Pete Piringer, whose agency responded to some of the falling trees. No injuries were reported.

Airlines canceled flights, churches called off weekend services and people wondered if they would be stuck at home for several days in a region ill-equipped to deal with so much snow.

“D.C. traditionally panics when it comes to snow. This time, it may be more justifiable than most times,” said Becky Shipp, who was power-walking in Arlington, Va., Friday. “I am trying to get a walk in before I am stuck with just the exercise machine in my condo.”

The region’s second snowstorm in less than two months brought heavy, wet snow and strong winds.

Several thousand people in West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania had lost electricity and more outages were expected as the snow began to bring down power lines. A hospital fire in D.C. sent about three dozen patients scurrying from their rooms to safety in a basement. The blaze started when a snow plow truck caught fire near the building.

Authorities blamed the storm for hundreds of accidents. Some area hospitals asked people with four-wheel-drive vehicles to volunteer to pick up doctors and nurses to take them to work.

The country band Rascal Flats postponed a concert Saturday in Ohio, but the Atlanta Thrashers-Washington Capitals NHL game went on as planned, and the Capitals extended their team-record winning streak at 13.

In Dover, Del., Shanita Foster left a Dollar General store lugging three gallons of water.

“That’s all we need right now; we’ve got everything else,” said Foster, adding that she was ready with candles in case the power went out.

Shoppers jammed aisles and emptied stores of milk, bread, shovels, driveway salt and other supplies. Many scrambling for food and supplies were too late.

“Our shelves are bare,” said Food Lion front-end manager Darlene Baboo in Dover. “This is just unreal.”

Metro, the Washington-area transit system, closed all but the underground rail service and suspended buses in the area that heavily relies on both. Maryland’s public transportation also shut down Saturday, including Baltimore’s Metro. Maryland Transit Administration spokeswoman Jawauna Greene said the underground portion of the Metro could reopen later Saturday but it depended on the weather conditions.

“We have trees on the overhead wires, trees on train tracks. We can’t get anything out,” she said.

Across the region, transportation officials deployed thousands of trucks and crews and had hundreds of thousands of tons of salt at the ready. Several states exhausted or expected to exhaust their snow removal budgets.

Maryland budgeted about $60 million, and had already spent about $50 million, Gov. Martin O’Malley said. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who has been in office less than a month, declared his second snow emergency, authorizing state agencies to assist local governments. As of early Saturday, some parts of Virginia had already seen more than 18 inches of snow.

The snow comes less than two months after a Dec. 19 storm dumped more than 16 inches on Washington. Snowfalls of this magnitude — let alone two in one season — are rare in the area. According to the National Weather Service, Washington has gotten more than a foot of snow only 13 times since 1870.

The heaviest on record was 28 inches in January 1922. The biggest snowfall for the Washington-Baltimore area is believed to have been in 1772, before official records were kept, when as much as 3 feet fell, which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson penned in their diaries.

In Washington, tourists made the best of it Friday, spending their days in museums or venturing out to see the monuments before the snow got too heavy.

A group of 13 high school students from Cincinnati was stranded in D.C. when a student government conference they planned to attend was canceled — after they had already arrived. So they went sightseeing.

At the Smithsonian’s Natural History museum, Caitlin Lavon, 18, and Hannah Koch, 17, took pictures of each other with the jaws of a great white shark in the Ocean Hall.

“Our parents are all freaking out, sending texts to be careful,” Koch said. “Being from Ohio, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much snow at once.” Hard money training.

Snow was piled so high in Iowa that drivers couldn’t see across intersections and a North Dakota snowblower repair shop was overwhelmed with business as residents braced Thursday for heavy snow and wind chills as low as 50 below zero.

Frigid weather also was gripping the South, where a rare cold snap was expected to bring snow and ice Thursday to states from South Carolina to Louisiana. Forecasters said wind chills could drop to near zero at night in some areas.

Dangerously cold wind chills were anticipated in the Midwest overnight, including as low as 35 below in eastern Nebraska, minus 45 in parts of South Dakota and negative 50 in North Dakota, according to National Weather Service warnings.

Another 10 inches of snow was expected in Iowa, buried in December by more than 2 feet of snow, while up to 9 inches could fall in southeast North Dakota that forecasters warned would create hazardous zero-visibility driving conditions. Wind gusts of 30 miles per hour were expected in Illinois — along with a foot of snow — while large drifts were anticipated in Nebraska and Iowa.

Joe Dietrich said he had to turn away dozens of customers this week from his snowblower repair shop in Bismarck, N.D.

“My building is only so big and I can only take so many,” Dietrich said.

The weather hasn’t let up since sweeping into the eastern U.S. earlier this week. Five straight days of double-digit subzero low temperatures, including negative 19, were recorded by the National Weather Service office in Chanhassen, Minn., a Twin Cities suburb.

“It’s brutally cold, definitely brutal,” meteorologist Tony Zaleski said.

Several deaths have been blamed on the cold. An 88-year-old woman died of hypothermia Tuesday in her unheated Chicago home, an Alzheimer’s sufferer died after wandering into his yard in Nashville, Tenn., and a homeless man was found dead in a tent in South Carolina, authorities said. Kansas City police said a man involved in a multi-car pileup Wednesday died after jumping a barrier wall in the dark, apparently to avoid sliding cars, and falling about 80 feet.

In the South, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear declared a state of emergency in Perry County on Wednesday after water line breaks left areas without water.

Freeze warnings covered nearly all of Florida with temperatures expected to drop into the 20s overnight. Freezing iguanas were seen falling out of trees in Florida; experts say the cold-blooded reptiles become immobilized when the temperature falls into the 40s and they lose their grip on the tree.

Schools in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri and Oklahoma were among those expected to cancel classes because of weather, while major roads in South Dakota, North Carolina and Virginia were closed.

Salt had no effect on the Twin Cities’ ice-rutted streets, and the deep snow left over from a Christmas storm has hardened into rock-hard blocks. The conditions helped business at Roger’s Master Collision, an auto-body repair shop in Plymouth, Minn.

“A lot of people sliding on the ice, then hitting the snowbanks. They’re frozen up pretty hard,” said store manager Kirk Suchomel, estimating the shop is averaging 15 repair estimates a day. “I’m sure we’re going to stay busy.”

In Iowa, officials in Des Moines warned that a $3 million annual snow removal budget would likely be exhausted with this week’s storm. Another 10 inches of snow was forecast overnight — on top of the more than 28 inches of snow that fell there in December.

Public Works Director Bill Stowe said the city would tap a $6 million road maintenance fund to cover snow clearing for the rest of the season. Snow that had been plowed into tall piles at intersections was set to be dumped into a lake. Hard money training.

A military helicopter searched upper elevations of Mount Hood on Monday, as rescuers held onto hope that two experienced climbers would be found alive after a third member of their party was discovered dead over the weekend.

Search teams were working against time, with a new storm expected to hit Oregon’s highest peak overnight.

Taking advantage of a brief break in the weather, a Black Hawk helicopter operated by the Oregon Army National Guard searched for signs of life or debris. Ground teams have also started up the mountain but remained at lower elevations because of avalanche dangers.

Mountaineers found the body of Luke T. Gullberg, 26, of Des Moines, Wash., on Saturday at the 9,000-foot level on Reid Glacier.

Officials were examining photos from Gullberg’s camera for possible clues about the location of his companions.

Authorities have not released details on the photos. But Teri Preiss, an aunt of missing climber Anthony Vietti, said the photos suggested the trio had changed their route up the mountain to avoid one that looked too dangerous.

Bad weather has frustrated ground teams and aircraft searching high elevations for Vietti, 24, of Longview, Wash., and Katie Nolan, 29, of Portland, who have been missing since Friday.

Preiss believes her nephew and Nolan were strong enough to survive somewhere on the 11,249-foot mountain.

“Today is our day,” Preiss said.

Steve Rollins, a search leader, said the climbers were known to have ice axes that could be used to hack out a snow cave.

“It’s more like digging with a spoon than a shovel, but if you’re life is in danger you can do wonderful things,” said Rollins, with Portland Mountain Rescue.

Officials previously said the climbers did not have shovels.

Relatives of all three climbers gathered at Timberline Lodge, a ski resort on the flank of Mount Hood and a staging area for the search.

“We want to get above 10,000 feet,” said Nate Thompson, search coordinator with the Clackamas County sheriff’s office. Hard money training.