“We all need to be clear that this was an incredibly unusual event,' Gov. Ralph Northam said at a news conference, adding that he could understand drivers' “frustration and fear.”
RICHMOND, Va. — A winter storm that started as rain — meaning roads couldn't be pretreated — followed by an unusually heavy snowfall and plunging temperatures resulted in the stranding of hundreds of motorists along a stretch of one of the nation's biggest interstate highways, Virginia officials said, as they defended their response to the gridlock.
They mounted throughout the day as snow fell at a rate of up to 2 inches an hour, said Marcie Parker, a Virginia Department of Transportation engineer leading the effort to clear the interstate. Slaughter said she soon came to a stop and she found out about the disabled vehicles on the radio and over social media.Meera Rao and her husband, Raghavendra, were driving home from visiting their daughter in North Carolina when they got stuck Monday evening. They were only 100 feet past an exit but could not move for roughly 16 hours.
Up to 11 inches of snow fell in the area during Monday’s blizzard, according to the National Weather Service, and state police had warned people to avoid driving unless absolutely necessary, especially as colder nighttime temperatures set in. Officials never provided an estimate of the number of vehicles that tied up in the jam. Photos showed they numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands.
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