THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 17, 1996 TAG: 9602170299
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE AND JON FRANK, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 148 lines
Winter took an unexpected swing at Hampton Roads for a third time this season on Friday. It was a glancing but disrupting blow, tying up afternoon traffic on the south side while leaving 2 to 4 inches of snow and sleet. Williamsburg and the Peninsula had a half-foot or more.
The storm lacked the crippling combination of ice and snow packed by the season's last frigid attack. But unlike that storm, thousands of exasperated motorists were caught in tieups that tried their patience and multiplied their travel time.
One afternoon commuter needed about 70 minutes to travel from the Port Norfolk section of Portsmouth to her job in downtown Norfolk. On a good day, the trip takes less than 10 minutes.
It took another from 4:20 p.m. until 7 p.m. to reach his Virginia Beach home on Little Neck Road from downtown Norfolk. He usually makes the trip in 25 minutes.
Another motorist said she was in a line of traffic that crawled at 10 mph from Norfolk to Hampton across the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
``This is crazy,'' said Chesapeake resident Juanita Shavers, who left work at the Norfolk Naval Base at 4 p.m. and was still creeping through bumper-to-bumper traffic near Scope at 6:30 p.m. ``It took me an hour to get off Hampton Boulevard.''
Suffolk resident Gene Leonard found himself stuck in gridlock traffic Friday afternoon when he attempted to get home through the Downtown Tunnel. After more than two hours, Leonard said, he decided on another route and detoured toward the Midtown Tunnel and Port Norfolk.
``At least we are moving now,'' Leonard said about 6 p.m. as he and a friend drove their pickup truck toward the tunnel.
Bus traffic at Norfolk's Greyhound station also was delayed Friday afternoon. A bus from New York City was two hours late, said a Greyhound ticket agent. But early Friday evening the buses were expected to be back on schedule, said Teresa Washington of Norfolk, who was planning to travel to St. Louis Friday night.
``They told me my bus would be here on time,'' Washington said.
It was still a far cry from the weekend storm of Feb. 2-4. At its peak, that storm cut power to 138,000 Virginia Power customers, leaving some without lights and heat for days.
First there was snow, then that storm encased the region in ice and finally dumped another half-foot of snow on top of the glaze. This time, the storm was moving quickly and was expected to end overnight with skies forecast to clear today.
Friday's storm was a northeaster that threatened to dump a foot or more of snow from Richmond to Boston by today. It developed off the Virginia Capes and the Outer Banks, bringing cold air and Atlantic moisture together over Virginia and North Carolina. And it spread snow from Atlanta to Maine.
The sun should be shining today with highs in the mid to upper 30s and winds northwest at 15 to 25 mph.
Tonight is expected to be partly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of snow flurries and a low in the mid 20s.
Sunday should be mostly sunny but breezy and cold with the high getting just above freezing.
The extended forecast calls for increasing cloudiness on Monday with a high in the 30s and a low in the 20s. There's a chance of rain Tuesday with a high in the 40s and a low in the 30s.
Snow began falling early Friday in western sections of Hampton Roads and on the Peninsula.
State police alone handled more than 175 accidents on area interstates in a four-hour period beginning at 4:30 a.m. Friday. Most were on the Peninsula and in Isle of Wight and Southampton counties. But as bad weather spread into the south side, the accident counts soared until state police spokeswoman Tammy Van Dame could say only, ``There are too many accidents to count.''
There were three fatal accidents reported early Friday, although only one of the deaths, in an accident in Suffolk, appeared to be directly related to the weather.
Around 9 p.m. Friday, state police said there had been more than 500 accidents in southeastern Virginia since 9:30 a.m. Suffolk students must make up a make-up day
For children who normally revel in snowy weather as they are told to stay home, the joy of winter may be wearing off thanks to a lengthening ledger of days yet to be made up.
Schools never opened in Williamsburg, James City County, Isle of Wight County, Newport News, Franklin, Southampton County and on the Eastern Shore on Friday; classes let out early in Hampton and Suffolk.
And there will be no classes today in Suffolk where officials had planned to make up for one snow day with Saturday classes. That plan was buried with Friday's newest snow and the decision to let the students stay home.
``It's unreal,'' said Jo Ann Milteer, who works for the Suffolk school system. ``We haven't had to make up a make-up day before.''
On the Outer Banks and in northeastern North Carolina, residents weathered a mix of rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow while in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Chesapeake, rain initially mixed with sleet in the morning and, occasionally, a little snow. But at mid-afternoon, when the mercury dipped to freezing, the snow began to fall in earnest.
And once it did, the region again turned white very quickly.
By dusk, the snow really began to fall as a wide swath of heavy precipitation moved over the region, threatening several hours of heavy snowfall.
It all caught meteorologists off guard.
Forecasters were on the mark in predicting where the storm would form and how it would move. But expectations on Thursday had been that Hampton Roads would see only rain mixing occasionally with snow. And even in areas where heavier snow had been forecast, the storm was proving more productive than had been anticipated.
``The storm is winding up more than I think all of us thought it would,'' said Rick Johnson, of The Weather Channel, who conceded on the air: ``We got it wrong'' with the forecast the day before. ``I must admit it's been something of a surprise,'' he said.
And with its rapid intensification into a major northeaster, the storm threatened to yet again make a mess of air travel as airports in Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York and Boston saw runways closed and flights delayed or canceled.
At Norfolk International Airport, the effects of the storm were already being felt Friday night as flights to and from the northeast were being affected by the weather.
``This winter is going down in the record books. We're talking about record snowfall or close to it in several cities,'' said Jill Brown of The Weather Channel. One of those records was set in Lynchburg on Friday where 8 inches of snow by mid-afternoon brought the year's snowfall total to 51 inches, a seasonal record.
Virginia Power reported two outages affecting about 4,000 homes. Both were in Virginia Beach, but neither was weather-related, the company reported. MEMO: Susie Stoughton contributed to this report. Susie Stoughton contributed
to this report.
ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA\ The Virginian-Pilot
A pedestrian braves the intersection of Bank and Plume streets in
Norfolk's financial district Friday afternoon. Thousands of
exasperated motorists were caught in tie-ups that tried their
patience and multiplied their travel time. By 9 p.m. Friday, state
police said there had been more than 500 accidents in southeastern
Virginia since morning.
Color photo by CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/The Virginian-Pilot
During Friday evening's rush hour, traffic crawls on Brambleton
Avenue in downtown Norfolk. The view is to the west, toward the
entrance to the Midtown Tunnel.
Color photo by HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
This accident on Granby Street in Norfolk was one of more than 500
in southeastern Virginia on Friday.
KEYWORDS: WEATHER STORM by CNB