AccuWeather's Ali Reid reported live from Norfolk as snow buried roads across eastern Virginia on the evening of Feb. 19.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00AccuWeather's Allie Reed is there. Allie, we will try this again. You were giving us a great picture
00:05of the road conditions and just kind of the current situation there in Norfolk.
00:12Right, we're in downtown Norfolk, guys, right now. Really interesting to see the trajectory of when
00:18the snowfall started a few hours ago versus where we are now. We know the snow is dumping down
00:23really about an inch an hour. That is a lot of snowfall at one time. By the way,
00:28here is some of the major roadways in the downtown area. This car within the last couple of seconds
00:34took him about five minutes to even get past this road because he was stuck. He wasn't able
00:39to get over it and that is something that we've been seeing time and time again. Andy, if we can,
00:44let's zoom in on that car all the way in the distance across from us. The reason why that car
00:48is stopped is because if you take a look to the left of that vehicle, that is a hill right there
00:54and a lot of these cars are just simply not able to get up and over it. That has been a recurring
00:59problem not only in the downtown area but a lot of the major roadways too. But I want to show you
01:04what it looked like just two, three hours ago. Okay, not nearly as much snowfall as what we're seeing now
01:13but this shows you what it looks like in that area. That's about a 20-minute drive from where
01:17we are now and we know there is getting pummeled with snow too. Really interesting to see what it
01:23looks like along the shoreline there. Nasty waves in that area too, all mixing in with this
01:30snowfall that we're seeing. We also had an opportunity to catch up with a business owner
01:34there. Take a listen to what he has to say just about what the snowfall can be like in this area
01:39on a typical year. I'm just glad I'm not working. We never know what we're going to have.
01:47One year I had roses blooming on my deck, the next year we had 15 inches of snow.
01:52Usually it's about one or two inches all we get here.
02:00Again, that goes to show you Virginia Beach, Norfolk area, Hampton Roads as a whole does not
02:06see this type of snowfall in a typical year. A lot of people, you scroll through X, you know other
02:11social media and they say, wow this is unusual for this type of area and that is so true. What's
02:18interesting is that what we'll see over the next couple of hours, again we could potentially see
02:22later on tonight into early tomorrow, potentially anywhere from 9 to 12 inches of accumulated
02:28snowfall. 12 inches by the way, that is upwards of a foot of snow here in this area. That doesn't
02:36happen very often. Again, let's show you the roadways one more time before we send it back
02:39into studio. Again, a lot of these smaller vehicles, SUVs having an easier time getting
02:44through. A lot of these cars that you're seeing, Hondas, other vehicles, having a difficult time
02:49getting across roadways because of the slippery roadways that we're seeing right now. And that is
02:56only, again, we're really only just a few hours into this. This is going to continue for hours.
03:00We've seen the crashes on the roads. Police, other entities trying to do as much as they can right
03:06now to get ahead of it. Unfortunately guys, I think that this is only the start. I think we
03:11could potentially see some more crashes, some accidents later on tonight, something we'll be
03:15keeping an eye on. But the biggest thing, if you are here or in any area that has snowfall right
03:20now, stay home. Stay nice and cozy. That's where you should be watching AccuWeather. All right,
03:25we're going to check with you in about 30 minutes time. We'll send it back to you for now.
03:29All right, Allie, thank you so much. One of those signs says, when it snows, we're closed. So that
03:34should be our theme here at AccuWeather, right? I don't know that the people watching us would
03:39love that very much. So like we need to know about the forecast. I will say though, it's so
03:42easy to think, eh, there's snow on the roads, but it's not that bad. I need to head out. I'll be
03:46quick. It'll be fine. Just stay home. Just stay home. Yeah. Allie was talking with some VDOT folks.
03:51That's the Virginia Department of Transportation. They were saying that this is a once in a decade
03:57type of winter storm that they've been tracking. So you can see like some of the major roadways,
04:00those are fine. But the side roads that Allie was reporting from,
04:03that's where we're going to get into trouble here as we head into this evening.