From the WashPost: How the East Coast’s busiest highway unraveled: 36 hours of confusion and misery on I-95. Miscommunications and holes in Virginia’s response added to the confusion as motorists were stranded overnight
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The Boss and I were visiting our son and grandson in Bristow. We had intended to leave Monday to go back to SC. We would have gone down Dumfries Road to I-95. We woke up that AM, saw the snow – then about 4 inches – and turned on the TV. I-95 was already a mess. We kept hoping to leave Monday, but saw conditions on I-95 deteriorating, and didn’t trust backroads. We left Tuesday via VA28/US29 – smooth sailing. Four things stand out to me:
• This was an unusual storm. Western VA had very little snow; the totals seemed to get worse the farther east one looked – I think this is the reverse of what would be expected. It appears that planning hadn’t been concentrated on this type of an event.
• The TV coverage was excellent. One has to wonder why the state didn’t pay more attention to the TV stations. It appears that the state expected normal intel on traffic flow/road condition of I-95 and didn’t have it. Hopefully future planning will have a contingency for loss of intel.
• That section of I-95 is almost always a driver’s nightmare – extreme congestion most of the day. Any bad weather is likely to be an invitation to disaster. This is where the planning seems poor. With no visuals, probably should have expected problems and taken mitigating action asap. Why didn’t they use TV helicopters, for example?
• Best thing travellers can do in those conditions is stay off the road! People from SC shouldn’t be on snowy roads; even those of us who once knew how to drive under those conditions have probably forgotten a lot of what we should have known.
Good for you. It would not have been good to spend overnight in the car under those conditions.