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Winter's early start
Weekend blizzard's 10 to 16 inches of snow add days to school break
Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by JESSE YEATMAN
Hannah Heisler, 3, Everett Grube, 4, and Finnley Grube, 2, slide down a hill Sunday at St. Mary's College of Maryland.
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The snow began falling on Friday night and continued through Saturday. By the time it ended it piled up with between 10 and 16 inches throughout St. Mary's County, according to the National Weather Service, and added two days to the beginning of winter break for students of the public schools.
Schools were closed Monday and Tuesday, but "all in all, we fared well," said David Zylak, director of the St. Mary's County Department of Public Safety. Despite the high winds, there were only 21 calls for trees down during the storm and most of the county had uninterrupted electricity.
District court was closed Monday and the circuit court opened late, but Patuxent River Naval Air Station opened for business as usual.
While Maryland State Highway Administration crews went to work on the major highways, the St. Mary's County Department of Public Works and Transportation mobilized its snow operations center at 11 p.m. Friday. At 2 a.m. Saturday, contractors were called in to help the county's 40-person crews. The county had 18 pieces of snow removal equipment out with 32 pieces of contractor equipment, said George Erichsen, director of the department.
The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for St. Mary's County and the immediate vicinity beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday, and it expired that afternoon earlier than predicted.
By 4 p.m. Saturday, Erichsen said all of the county's first-priority road routes were plowed at least once and work continued Sunday to finish the 1,200 miles of county roads.
Late Saturday afternoon the Southern Maryland Chapter of the American Red Cross was asked to provide cots, blankets and comfort kits for about 30 snow plow drivers in St. Mary's who had been working around the clock, Mike Zabko, CEO of the Red Cross chapter reported.
The plan was to turn an open space in the public works building on St. Andrew's Church Road "into a respite area where the weary drivers could get some sleep, a shower and some food to get them back on the road," Zabko said in a statement. "Our biggest challenge was getting our emergency vehicle and supply trailer from La Plata to California … safely with the requested supplies to set up the temporary sleeping facility. After fighting with a snow-bound fence gate and hooking the trailer up in knee-deep snow we were able to start our nearly two-hour journey. Safely arriving at the public works facility they put the comfort kits, blankets and cots to work."
By Monday the snow clearing work was largely completed. Temperatures above freezing, coupled with strong sunlight Monday and Tuesday, loosened up the packed ice that remained on roadways.
The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office reported that it responded to 55 calls to help motorists over the weekend. There were 38 calls for automobile accidents, with injuries reported in four of them. "For the amount of snow, it was not what it could have been," Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron (R) said Monday. "We ferried a lot of people home" after calls to assist motorists.
The sheriff's office utilized its aging fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles during the storm to keep up patrols, including a Chevy Suburban from the 1980s. "In this case they fit the bill perfectly," he said, "a critical part of contingency planning."
Floyd Abell has been keeping daily weather statistics in Hollywood since 1980. He said Monday of the weekend's blizzard, when he recorded 14.5 inches of snow, "It was the most single snow in December at my station." His old record was 10.5 inches on Dec. 12, 1982.
Though a foot of snow fell March 1, the biggest snowstorm in the last 10 years came on Jan. 25, 2000, when Abell recorded 16.5 inches.
