Snowstorm grinds area to standstill

The Charlottesville region struggled to get back on its feet Sunday in the wake of a record snowfall.

U.S. 29 between Interstate 64 and the Nelson/Albemarle County line finally re-opened Sunday, though officials cautioned the road, like most in the area, remained hazardous.

Many secondary roads in the county remained unplowed, officials said.

“It’s not that they’re closed, you just might not be able to get through,” said Marge Thomas, emergency management coordinator for Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the University of Virginia.

Lou Hatter, Virginia Department of Transpor-tation spokesman, said plows will continue to work to improve main roads as they clear back roads.

“We are likely to see some snow, some packed snow, on the roads for the next few days,” he said.

Albemarle County spokeswoman Lee Catlin said the county still needs drivers with four-wheel-drive vehicles to make trips on the rough roads.

Drivers have been doing things such as taking medical professionals to work, running people home from shelters and delivering medicine to the homebound, she said.

“It’s been just a great outpouring from the community,” she said.

More than 100 people have already helped out, she said. Drivers can volunteer by calling 979-INFO.

Catlin also said officials are continuing to scour back roads for stranded motorists who might not have been found yet.

Trains and planes were running Sunday, but transit officials were still sorting out many problems caused by snow. City buses did not run Sunday because of snow, and University buses do not run Sundays in general. Monticello was also closed.

As of 4 p.m. Virginia Dominion Power was reporting about more than 3,800 customers without power in Central Virginia. All but a handful were in Charlottesville or Albemarle County.

Cheryl Hill, front office manager at the Holiday Inn University reported that power company officials were looking for 200 rooms in town for workers clearing outages.

The Commonwealth of Virginia Electric Cooperative reported 64 customers in the Charlottesville area without power as of 2:30 p.m.

Earlier in the day, about 200 had been in the dark.

“It’s kind of a ring around Charlottesville, the rural portions,” said Greg Kelly, CVEC’s member services director.

Sunday afternoon, only two people, an elderly couple, remained in a shelter at the UVa Aquatics Center. All of the people sheltering at the center and at North Garden’s fire station after being stranded in their cars had left. The couple at the aquatics center was new. The pair went in after losing power at their home, said Joyce Martin of Charlottesville Social Services, the shelter’s manager.

“Things are much better than they were yesterday,” said Thomas. “We’ve still got a ways to go, but the sun’s shining and we’re optimistic finally.”

Area hotels reported rooms were becoming available as stranded motorists got underway.

“It looks like everyone was trying to get out on the roads today,” said Kelly Theus, front office manager at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel.

Charlottesville’s government will be open from 11 a.m to 5 p.m. today with reduced services, said city spokesman Ric Barrick.

The 20.5 inches recorded at McCormick Observatory made the storm the fourth largest to hit Charlottesville since observers began keeping records more than 100 years ago, said Jerry Stenger, director of the state climatology office at UVa.

It also made it the largest storm to hit in December since record keeping started.

The observatory has now recorded 23.6 inches of snow for the year, far in excess of the 17.2 inches Charlottesville averages for the entire season.

While the area made out better than the Shenandoah Valley — Waynesboro reported 28 inches — it still got plenty of white stuff, Stenger said.

“We were just about in the bull’s-eye for some of the largest snow amounts around the state,” he said.

Stenger explained the snow was particularly fluffy, as well, because the air was so cold.

All that snow works out to just under an inch of water, he said.

“Yet we were able to squeeze over 20 inches of snowfall out of it,” Stenger said.

And because it’s not supposed to get all that warm in the near future, the ground will stay white for a while, he said.

And he said there’s the possibility that another storm, expected on Christmas Eve, could coat what remains of the snow with freezing rain.

“That would be very unpleasant,” he said. “It would not make for very safe trips to Grandma’s house that night.”

Brian Johnson, of Owensville Road, was shoveling out his driveway when reached by phone Sunday.

He estimated snowfall at his home at 22 inches.

“If you don’t count the drift, I think that’s probably fair,” he said.

Johnson said cars have been trying to avoid a drift by taking the low side of a curve right in front of his property.

“It just slides them right down into my yard,” he said.

So far no one has been stuck so badly they’ve had to spend the night, he said.

“We had a tractor that we got out late yesterday — a smaller tractor that a bigger one came and got out,” he said.

He estimated five vehicles had gotten stuck since Saturday morning, though it had quieted down lately, with just one pickup truck freed Sunday.

He also managed to run several people who were stranded to their destination, and then saw another pedestrian.

“Here’s this UVa cardiologist walking along in his scrubs and coat,” Johnson said.

Johnson said that by Sunday his road was passable for four-wheel drive vehicles.