The first snow day after a big storm feels liberating. By the third, people start to get a little punchy — especially when kids can’t go to school.
And that’s exactly where residents were by Wednesday, as many tried to dig themselves out of the weekend snow and sleet storm and wondered why city plows hadn’t yet gotten to many streets and why sidewalks remained an unnavigable mess.
Even where there was progress, it was uneven: Massive piles of snow cleared from main roads blocked pedestrians from accessing crosswalks and boarding Metrobuses, some complained that the city’s snowplow tracker didn’t reflect reality, and things got so dicey in some places that even plows got stuck. (That’s not even to mention the usual spotty efforts by homeowners to clear their own walks, as the law requires.)
And this being D.C., there was plenty of topical humor and criticism. “Three days after the snowstorm and many streets still are not clear. Are we really in the same city that contemplated taking over Greenland just a few weeks ago?” offered journalist Nancy Youssef. (Ice breakers would be handy in both places.)
“Serious question: why did we give millions of dollars to a NFL stadium when we don’t have enough snow plows in D.C.?” opined Democratic activist David Hogg. (D.C.’s snow removal budget for the year is $7.3 million.)
We’re not ones to claim D.C. is great with snow — it’s traditionally not. That’s partly because it’s not much of a snow town to begin with: The average annual snowfall is just 13.7 inches, roughly half of what New York City gets. And D.C. is intimately tied to the counties that surround it, where snow-removal efforts aren't usually much better. (And that's where many city workers live.)
But D.C. officials say this storm was distinctly bad, as have been the frigid days that followed. But does that argument hold water, frozen or otherwise?
Some real talk about the storm
We should be clear: It was a really big storm, and it’s being followed by a surprisingly long stretch of frigid weather. (Cue the joke that D.C.’s snow-clearing policy has historically been to wait for spring.) Per the Capital Weather Gang, the storm packed a mix of snow and sleet that equaled a 20-inch blizzard, and we’re now in the midst of our longest cold spell in more than a century, delaying the usual post-storm melt.
“This was an unusual storm,” says D.C. City Administrator Kevin Donahue, who has worked on responding to snow storms in the city for more than two decades. “People who've been here for a while will remember 2016. They remember 2010. Folks who have been here long enough remember 1996. Those had higher accumulation levels. The ice in this one was really unique. And it wasn't an hour of sleet and freezing rain. We probably had eight hours of it. I put this as the most challenging snow event I've worked.”
That mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain created what local officials are calling “snowcrete,” which is, well, you get it — really tough to deal with.
And it’s not just D.C. There’s been plenty of complaints of uncleared neighborhood streets and sidewalks around the Washington region, and like D.C., none of the surrounding counties opened their schools before Thursday. (And many remained closed on Thursday, while D.C. opened on a two-hour delay.)
For plenty of D.C. residents, it’s little solace to hear that other cities are dealing with similar issues. That includes Terry Lynch, a longtime Ward 1 resident, civic activist, and current D.C. Council candidate.
“What cleanup efforts? I haven’t seen any,” he said when I reached him on Wednesday.
Lynch tells The 51st that he walked portions of Ward 1 on Sunday, and saw only one plow service Columbia Road, a busy east-west thoroughfare. “What they’re doing is insufficient. They should have done a first plow during the storm, and pretreated for the ice. By failing that, we have eight inches of snow with an ice cap on it,” he said. (Aparna Raj, a fellow Ward 1 candidate, agrees that snow-removal efforts have fallen short.)
For residents who feel the same, they may want to know what D.C.’s plan was — if there was one — and how it was executed. I put that very question to Donahue when we spoke on Wednesday.
“Given the magnitude and given the composition of the storm, this is where I would expect to be,” he told me. “We've made enough progress with the plowing and the snow removal that we're just able to tackle more and more each day because we have fewer roads for plows to focus on with each passing day.”
Donahue says the general response prioritized main roads and highways, with some residential roads getting plowed. But there were challenges: the light plows that D.C. uses for those streets struggled with the snowcrete, and some were damaged in the process. Crews and additional contractors continued to play catch up as the week went on, and heavier equipment was brought in Wednesday to start hauling the snow piles that were blocking crosswalks away, and then depositing them at the RFK Stadium site.
By Wednesday evening, D.C. officials say between 85 and 90% of the city’s roads were deemed “passable.” That, of course, doesn’t mean they are fully back to normal, just that cars should be able to get through. (On Thursday morning, some residents were challenging the definition of "passable.")
All told, Donahue says D.C. had 350 plows available for this storm — just over 200 that are city-owned, the remainder are contractors. (D.C. has some 1,400 miles of roadways.) Most of those aren’t heavy plows, though, and the lighter vehicles faced challenges dealing with the ice.
As for the snowplow tracker that drew criticisms, he concedes that point. Whether because of broken GPS trackers or contractors not using GPS, “it understates the presence we have,” he said. “After the snow season, part of the after-action we'll look at is how to be able to improve how we give ground truth to residents.”
Slippery sidewalks
All of this, of course, only deals with D.C.’s roadways. Sidewalks have been their own distinct challenge, since it’s on residents and businesses to clear those after any storm. As history has shown, adherence to this social norm — and law — has been spotty at best. But that’s offered an opportunity for some mayoral campaigning: Kenyan McDuffie, who is seeking to succeed Mayor Muriel Bowser, announced that he and campaign volunteers will be helping residents dig out for the rest of the week.
For her part, Bowser drew criticism on Wednesday when she announced that D.C. wouldn't be enforcing the law that requires property owners to clear their sidewalks. She said the significant amount of ice had made the work additionally challenging, and that fining residents and businesses would only add salt to the wound. That prompted complaints from some residents, who pointed out that while the city seemed to prioritize clearing roads, pedestrians would be left to navigate a slippery mess for days to come. (Speaking again of mayoral politics, candidate Janeese Lewis George says that if she's elected she'll "rethink D.C.'s approach to sidewalks so it's more holistic.") The D.C. Department of Transportation didn't help much when it posted a message discouraging people from walking on cleared roadways. "GIRL THEN SHOVEL THE SIDEWALKS AND CROSSWALKS!!" was one response.
On top of all this, it's always worth remembering that while D.C. is responsible for clearing sidewalks in front of its properties (like schools, libraries, and rec centers), it's up the federal government to do so on the many properties it owns around the city. Historically that hasn't gone well, especially with the federal parks and parcels that are sprinkled across D.C.'s neighborhoods.
Frosty communications
No matter what side of the did-D.C.-drop-the-ball debate you’re on, plenty of people seem to agree on one thing: the city’s communication about what was happening (or not) wasn’t ideal.
“Where my colleagues and I have been most vocal with the mayor's team is the lack of clear communication to the public about what to expect,” said Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, who chairs the D.C. Council committee that oversees the Department of Public Works, which manages snow removal.
Ultimately, the explanations on what was going on seemed to come too late — and from third-hand sources. On Wednesday morning, Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto helped explain why some plowing was delayed when she tweeted that some plows had been breaking due to all the ice on the ground. That same morning, D.C. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsay Appiah replied to an irate tweeter with similarly helpful information: “We've brought in heavy machinery to break up and clear snow which is more like concrete than it is powdery or slushy substance.” By the afternoon, members of the council were sharing updates from a briefing they got from city officials. But it wasn’t until Wednesday evening that Bowser appeared for a briefing on storm cleanup efforts herself.
“It is the lack of communication about the problem and proposed solutions, as well as transparency about the timelines, that have really made things worse,” said Elissa Silverman, a former councilmember who is running for office again. “This way of operating erodes the public’s trust that our local government cares about us and can get the job done.”
The one area Bowser did get credit, though, was in her early calls on whether D.C. schools would be open this week. Parents are often used to waiting until the late hours of the night or wee hours of the morning to know whether their kids will be going to school, but this week those calls were made by the evening before.
The cleanup continues
While real life somewhat resumed on Thursday as kids returned to school – parents rejoice! – there’s still plenty of work left to do.
"Full recovery will take time — days, possibly a week — especially on residential streets and alleys. That’s not an excuse, but it is the reality we’ve pushed the city to be upfront about," wrote Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White on Instagram.
One big challenge will be alleys, which remain largely impassable but are critical for trash and recycling collection. Alleys are largely left to residents to clear, though D.C. is considering options to help out in order to resume trash collection. ("DPW is exploring creative ways to resume collection as soon as it is safe to do so," said Nadeau.) Sidewalks will also likely remain treacherous. Thankfully, Metro will be running close to normal capacity.
Ultimately, Bowser said that once the dust settles, she plans on reviewing what the city did and what it can improve on for next time. “After every big event we do a deep dive to see how we could have responded better, and I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot from this response,” she said.
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