A blanket of snow and slush hobbled the region’s transportation network Sunday as crews worked furiously to clear roads, runways and rail lines ahead of the coming rush hour.
Officials predicted it would take days to recover from the weekend’s record snowfall.
The storm dumped as much as 2 feet of snow on parts of the Washington area, frustrating Metro riders, air travelers, retailers and motorists alike.
Reagan National and Washington Dulles International airports began opening runways after hundreds of stranded passengers were forced to spend the night in the terminals. Road crews had interstates and other major arteries largely cleared, although many subdivision streets remained impassable.
Metro — which had shut down all of its 39 above-ground stations — reopened the Yellow Line stations and worked through the night to restore service to the remaining stops.
“We’re working as quickly as possible to get train service restored to the outer stations,” Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said. “It’s a multistep process of getting our tracks cleared, getting our tracks inspected, getting the rail switches inspected and cleared.”
Metrobus service also remained limited for most of the day and was suspended by the evening because of precarious, icy roadways.
The crippling snowstorm was especially bad news for retailers, which had counted on the last Saturday before Christmas to be the biggest shopping day of the year. At Tysons Corner Center, one of the region’s largest malls, stores extended “Super Saturday” promotions into the week and planned to open earlier and close later to make up for the lost sales, mall spokeswoman Allison Fischer said.
The sheer volume of snow stretched the capacities of local and state governments to react. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine authorized calling up 600 more National Guard members to assist in the mop-up operation. Authorities blamed the storm for four deaths in the commonwealth. Maryland, however, got the heaviest snowfall. Bethesda saw the most intense accumulation at 23 inches, according to the National Weather Service. American University recorded a total of 16 inches, while Reagan National Airport saw 15.4 inches. The pile-up was substantial enough to contribute to the collapse of an unoccupied three-story row house in Georgetown on Sunday afternoon, according to D.C. fire officials. The storm “had a serious impact” on air travel this weekend, said Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Normally, the two airports would have seen about 1,200 total flights Saturday, “the vast majority” of which were canceled. To accommodate travelers stranded overnight, she said the agency handed out 200 blankets at Reagan National and 1,000 at Dulles. Major delays persisted into Sunday. Among those temporarily waylaid coming into the region were the Chicago Bears, who finally landed at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Saturday night only to be routed by the Baltimore Ravens the next day.
