Area commuters should have little difficulty this morning, because transportation departments in the District, Maryland and Virginia were well-prepared to handle the predicted snowfall.
The National Weather Service yesterday predicted that the bulk of the snow would fall during the overnight hours, dumping 1 to 3 inches in the District and 1 to 4 inches in outlying areas. The weather service said the snow would be dry and temperatures would hover around 30 degrees.
Transportation officials didn’t want to be caught off-guard as happened Friday when no more than a half-inch of snow fell during a cold snap, causing icy roads. The slippery road conditions led to many minor accidents in Fairfax and Prince George’s counties and the District.
The D.C. Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Works were monitoring the weather yesterday and sent out crews to pretreat overpasses and main roadways with de-icer and salt, concentrating on bridges.
Crews planned to continue treating the roadways throughout the evening as the storm developed.
The Department of Transportation prepared a full deployment of snow-clearing equipment, including 36 heavy trucks, 20 to 25 light plows, two or three de-icing trucks, and 200 employees.
“We will have 139 trucks out by the height of the storm,” said Karen Good, a DOT spokeswoman.
Adrienne Cousler, a spokeswoman from the Maryland State Highway Administration, said 291,000 tons of salt and 2,100 pieces of equipment were available. Crews pretreated the roads with a salt chemical and 2,400 personnel were ready to clear roads in time for this morning’s rush hour, she said.
“We are watching the forecast very closely, and we will be ready,” Miss Cousler said.
The Virginia Department of Transportation planned to send out 750 trucks last night, but did not plan to pretreat the roads with chemicals. “If [the snow] hits when it is predicted, that is perfect. It gives us all night to work on clearing the roads,” VDOT spokesman Ryan Hall said.
VDOT had 120,000 tons of salt available, but officials said they didn’t expect to use even a quarter of that amount on this storm.
“When the snow starts to pile up a little, that is good because it makes people slow down, instead of when they just slip on black ice,” Mr. Hall said.
Public schools also were monitoring the storm, but said no decisions could be made until morning. D.C. school authorities were planning a 4 a.m. conference call today to decide whether to close schools.
Fairfax schools plan to follow standard procedures for school closings. “This [storm] is being called ahead of time, so that makes things easy,” a spokeswoman for the Fairfax schools said.
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