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Comment by GVIrish | Hacker News Reader

> The primary issue this week is that this section of Virginia rarely sees snowstorms of this magnitude and further most DC residents have no idea how to drive in it (or know when to stay home).

That's not really it. We get snowstorms of this size once every 2 or 3 years, sometimes more. The problem is that somehow they didn't keep up with plowing and salting on that stretch of I-95, and that led to back-ups, and once that happened, there was no way to prevent ice from forming on the road. An exacerbating factor was that it was raining before the snow event, so they weren't able to pre-salt/brine the roads.

Notice that the major traffic jam was on I-95 South outside of the beltway, it wasn't on the outer loop, inside DC, or in Maryland even though the storm blanketed the area.

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This is being pitched like it's a DC issue, but any one who lives in the area can tell you that the stretch of road they're talking about - Fredericksburg to Aquia, from what I can tell - is god awful, has been god awful, and from what I can see will continue to be God awful for the foreseeable future.

As for the plowing and salting - in general it's pretty bad, and this year has been no exception. Fairfax County was, as of the day before this storm, putting up flyers in 24 hour laundromats and outside of grocery stores looking for anyone who had a license to drive a plow truck. The problem is that, while we get hit with bad snow once every 2-3 years, that's not often enough for the local governments to need to do something about it. They don't want to spend the money, only to not need it until the next big storm, which might not come until someone else is in office.

> Notice that the major traffic jam was on I-95 South outside of the beltway, it wasn't on the outer loop, inside DC, or in Maryland even though the storm blanketed the area.

This is a good point and I think people are concluding too much from a single stretch of highway. Generally the chaos is more widespread, like in the original Carmageddon [0] and all if its sequels where I'd drive past abandoned cars the next day wherever I went.

It just seems like VDOT or whoever's contracted to take care of 95 screwed up. There's sand on the roads nearby me, and it rained before snowing here, too. Maybe it being 60 degrees the day before didn't help.

[0] https://wtop.com/weather-news/2015/01/history-disastrous-sno...

They don’t get snow often enough that is makes sense to have robust snow removal. Even when it does snow it is rare that it doesn’t all melt within 24 hours of the storm passing. This is different than in the northern states where snow removal is a priority and it can snow weekly all winter and the snow sticks around until spring unless it is cleared.

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