Remembering the Blizzard of ’96

If the run on supermarkets and hardware stores Thursday and Friday was any indication, Washington area residents were prepared to hunker down yet again for the long haul.

The Blizzard of 1996 was a major Nor’easter that paralyzed the Eastern Seaboard for nearly a week. It was described by the National Weather Service as “one of the great snowfalls of the 20th Century.” Sixty deaths were linked to it, including 18 in Virginia and 13 in Maryland.

It was, said Terry Lynch, executive director of D.C.’s Downtown Cluster of Congregations, “the perfect storm.”

“You had a dysfunctional public work sector,” Lynch said. “You had a huge snow drop. You had a population, a large majority of whom were unfamiliar with driving in snow conditions. That made the impacts of the storm last for weeks.”

The 1996 storm left 17.1 inches of heavy, wet snow at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the fourth largest snowfall in D.C. history. Washington Dulles International Airport registered 24.6 inches. In the storm’s wake, the D.C. area was hit with bitter cold temperatures and, days later, another snowfall.

As the snow arrived, a four-car Red Line Metrorail train overran the Shady Grove Station platform and plowed into an unoccupied six-car train, killing the train operator. Metrorail, its above-ground service at least, shut down for more than three days. Three roofs collapsed under the weight of snow: a nursing home in Clifton, Md., a church in Springfield and a D.C. school. Thousands of people were left without electricity.

As the snow arrived, a four-car Red Line Metrorail train overran the Shady Grove Station platform and plowed into an unoccupied six-car train, killing the train operator. Metrorail, its above-ground service at least, shut down for more than three days. Three roofs collapsed under the weight of snow: a nursing home in Clifton, Md., a church in Springfield and a D.C. school. Thousands of people were left without electricity.

The economic effect, according to an NWS review of the blizzard, was “huge to retailers in the Washington area who were already suffering from lost sales during a long stretch of government furloughs and budget uncertainty.”

D.C., virtually bankrupt at the time, was without nearly two-thirds of its snowplows when the storm hit. Residents were snowed in for a week and Mayor Marion Barry, now the Ward 8 D.C. councilman, never recovered politically.

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