I live in VA, and our clients didn't want to reschedule their dentals/spays/neuters today. Luckily, I'm not morning shift, so I may not have to go in at all, but I do hope that they can get everyone discharged and have all the staff go home before it gets bad. We're supposed to have white out conditions around 3-5 pm. We were trying to get clients to reschedule their Saturday appointments since we're 99% sure we'll be closed, but a lot of people refused. Of course, they were nearly all exam/vaccine and recheck appointments. Because your dog's been overdue on vaccines for two months, but it's suddenly so freaking urgent that you absolutely INSIST on coming in during a g-d blizzard.
Not really looking forward to this, though, even though I'm used to snow. I lived in western NY where it starts snowing at the end of October and where it goes non-stop through March or April once December rolls around. I used to have to clean my car off and shovel literally every morning. We'd have 1-2 feet of snow on the ground most of the time. The last year I was there, my city totally screwed up all the plowing, and my street hardly ever got plowed. I drove through a legit, serious blizzard, where everyone was going 20 mph on the interstate, because I absolutely could not miss my microbiology final exam. That was the time where I slid right past the on ramp to the interstate and had to keep going through some back roads, praying I could make it up and down hills without skidding off into a ditch, so I could get to the next exit/on-ramp.
Absolutely none of that adequately prepared me for the absolute nightmare that is driving in the DC metro area when there's any amount of snow anywhere. Not only are the local governments terrible at preparing and reacting, drivers panic and have no idea what they're doing. Wednesday night, we got one inch of snow, and it took me THREE HOURS to get home from school, which is a distance of about 20 miles. It was barely an inch of snow. Even when it was melting underneath all of the traffic, people were still going 5 mph for basically no reason while others were driving like lunatics. And then there were fender benders where people refused to actually get out of the freaking road, which caused all of the back ups and delays. After taking over an hour to go literally one single measly mile, I saw one cause of the stoppage -- two cars pulled over on the side of the road with no visible damage. Great. Super.
One of my coworkers lives half a mile from her fiance's work, right outside the city. He had to take I-66 to get home, but they completely shut the highway down at rush hour and were only letting one car through at a time because they had trucks out treating the road. He left at a normal hour and didn't get home until 1 am. On Thursday morning, my husband's coworker said he spotted multiple abandoned cars on the side of the Beltway. All over ONE INCH OF SNOW.
If people don't stay home and off the roads, this is going to be absolute chaos.
Not looking forward to clearing our long, steep driveway on Sunday.
We saw all four seasons in 24 hours. It started out muggy, and then it rained and there was fog, and then a tornado touched down not to far from my campus. And now it's really, really cold and windy.
