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Blizzard of '96 Anniversary


AlYourWxPal

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I was living in Columbia for that storm and the forecast called for 1 to 2 feet. By evening, we had one foot and then got dry-slotted, so I was a little disappointed. Then, overnight we got an additonal foot on the backside. A few days later, a localized snow band set up over 95 between Bmore and DC and gave us another 4 inches to freshen things up.

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This was a great storm and best drifting of any snow storm I have experienced in my 18 years living in Herndon. Could not get my garage door open due to the 10 ft drift. I went out back door and split rail fence was completely buried. It took me two days (12 hours) of shoveling to clear my driveway. We received 24" and then 6" in the second storm that week. 10 days later we came close to a second major blizzard but it was all rain. Major rain storm that washed away all the snow and caused some flooding.

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I lived in Germantown, Md. then and remember it well.

The private contractor snow plow for my small neighborhood got stuck at the entrance and after a few days of being snowbound, all the residents came out one afternoon and dug out the streets with snow shovels. Such an odd sight!

If I'm not mistaken, I believe our season total that winter was about six feet.

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Were you in Richmond at the time?

No, I lived in Fisherville, VA at the time. If you look at the map, where the white brings 3'+ down into Augusta County, where it transitions from 3'+ to 2-3' is where we lived at the time.

I didn't do any real measuring at the time. Waited for it to stop snowing and stuck a ruler/yard stick in to the ground. That's the only time the yard stick ever disappeared on me.

post-2577-0-51488400-1325906818.jpg

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I was living in CO at the time. My only recount is phone calls from friends in this area.

Can someone post s few pics? I think I've only seen like 1 or 2 pics from the storm. Pre-digital days kinda suck.

Don Sutherland has some in his gallery of snow pictures:

http://wintercenter.homestead.com/photo1996x.html

http://wintercenter.homestead.com/photo1996.html

http://wintercenter.homestead.com/photo1996b.html

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I lived in Germantown, Md. then and remember it well.

The private contractor snow plow for my small neighborhood got stuck at the entrance and after a few days of being snowbound, all the residents came out one afternoon and dug out the streets with snow shovels. Such an odd sight!

If I'm not mistaken, I believe our season total that winter was about six feet.

I remember a Mitsubishi Montero laying sideways with a broken axle on my street for a week. The guy was a typical high-strung business type who felt he needed to head to the office the minute the snow let-up and promptly ran over something buried in a drift busting his front axle. They sent in this pathetically small tow truck to extricate him (since he figured he'd just tow it to the shop during a blizzard and have it fixed lickety-split). The tow truck of course got stuck as well.

A day later they sent in a front-loader to dig them out and it too was stuck for a while. Of course this all served to block up the street for the non-morons and the real plows.

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'96 was the last storm I remember when things were really crippled. Plowing and salting operations have gotten so effective now that no one is really ever stuck. You saw cars driving around very quickly after Feb 6, 2010. That is an entirely different issue, though. I'll never understand the folks you see who madly spend all morning digging out on a Sunday just to drive slipping and sliding all around to Starbucks and then Office Depot to browse for pens.

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With my parents living in the same house in Potomac for 1/96, PDII, and 2/5-6/10, it was easy to compare the three. 1/96 had by far the highest drifts, halfway up the garage at the houses across the street. We barely mixed with a bit of sleet right around the dry period, but that didn't cut accumulations. I measured 25", ranking it second in total snowfall, behind 2/5-6/10. The impact was definitely more than for PDII because of the drift heights.

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I believe this is the MA subforum.

For the DC/Baltimore metro area, 2/5/10 and 2/10/10 easily beat 96. Normally I say things like these are a matter of opinion, but it's hard to argue for 96 in this case in terms of overall impact.

My favorite was a post from some guy in Nova Scotia during the blizzards. He said that a similar amount of snow dumped there would cripple NS as well, and he had a hard time fathoming how we were able to deal with snow removal.

I know people are comparing individual storms only, but when you add in the WSW criteria snow on January 30th/31st and February 3rd, that stretch becomes even more unfathomable. Most places in the DC/Baltimore metro area had more seasonal snow than any major or semi-major city in the US as of February 10th, 2010...more than SYR, more than Buffalo, etc. Obviously at the end of the season those cities had surpassed us, but that stat alone is mind-boggling.

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'96 was the last storm I remember when things were really crippled. Plowing and salting operations have gotten so effective now that no one is really ever stuck. You saw cars driving around very quickly after Feb 6, 2010. That is an entirely different issue, though. I'll never understand the folks you see who madly spend all morning digging out on a Sunday just to drive slipping and sliding all around to Starbucks and then Office Depot to browse for pens.

there were places that didnt see a plow for like 5 days after 2/6/10

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there were places that didnt see a plow for like 5 days after 2/6/10

I didn't have a full day of school from February 5th through February 21st, a span of 17 days. The area was about as crippled as it can get from a snowstorm/snowstorms (unless something surpasses this like 110 years from now, since it will probably be that long before something even remotely similar occurs ;) ).

There simply were not enough places to put all the snow.

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