Trust me: stay off the roads

Kristin McGrath

My blog is about transportation in Washington, and, for the past few days, there hasn't been much of it.

I spent my first 18 years in Wisconsin. I'm no stranger to snow. I grew up shoveling it, driving in it, molding it into shapes and developing a healthy fear of it.

And I have never seen anything like this.

I should also say that, by "this," I mean the aftermath of the snowpocalypse. I was in Texas this weekend (great timing), so I missed the storm itself. I was supposed to fly back in Sunday, but all flights were cancelled, so I finally arrived  back to my cold (the power just got turned back on today) apartment tonight (Monday), exhausted and shivering from my journey from BWI to Bethesda, Md.

It would be interesting, I thought as my plane touched down, to survey the road conditions between Baltimore and Bethesda on my drive back and blog about how the area is coping.

Here's how that went.

5:23: My plane lands.

6:00: Catch shuttle to long-term parking lot after a 30-minute wait. It is taking twice as long as usual to navigate the parking lots. Great.

6:07: See dump truck dumping snow off the roof of a parking garage. The pile onto which it is dumping is nearly the height of the four-story garage.

6:10: Everyone on the shuttle groans in unison as we enter the long-term parking lot and see things like this:

A car (and many like it) were burried in snow in BWI's long-term parking lot days after the storm.

6:15: I start digging out my own car, which looked like this:

My car was nearly burried after spending the entire blizzard parked outside.

6:20: I refuse help from two vigilante snow-shovelers who offer to excavate my car for $20. I call the "24-hour help line" posted in the parking lot several times and get a busy signal. I then begin hacking at the pile of snow behind my car with my window scraper and backing into the pile, causing it to crumble bit by bit.

7:30: Two men with shovels help me and, within five minutes, my car is finally free.

7:45: The roads (interstates and neighborhood roads) near Baltimore are pretty good (except for the fact that the far right lane of the interstate is covered in snow). Several plows are clearing the exit-only lanes.

8:00: Hear a radio DJ warn about icy patches on 495. Slow down to 45 miles per hour.

8:15: Hit one of those icy patches (there are a lot of patches of compressed snow and slush in the center lane) at 45 miles per hour and use all of my winter driving know-how to narrowly avoid an accident when the person behind me hits it going faster than 45 miles per hour. Switch to right lane, put on hazard lights and reduce speed to 40.

8:30: After hearing a report of more snow to come, I decide to go to the grocery store. Rockville Pike, a main road in North Bethesda, is in terrible condition, with compressed snow and slush and even small mounds of snow and slush in the middle of the road. In the dark, they are nearly impossible to see in advance. I feel myself start to slide several times and almost get stuck trying to get up a hill.

Montgomery County is still urging people to stay off the roads. I plan to.