More than Ice: Virginia Gets Actual Winter, Immediately Discovers Why Everyone Was Complaining About It

SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA — After several winters in which Southwest Virginia’s relationship with snow increasingly resembled a long-distance correspondence, winter finally showed up in person over the weekend with snow, sleet, ice, power outages and hundreds of automobile-related demonstrations of human optimism.

The January 24–25 storm spread mixed precipitation across most of Virginia. Around the New River Valley, snow changed rapidly to sleet overnight, leaving 2 to 6 inches of combined snow and sleet common across much of the state. A Virginia Department of Transportation camera along Interstate 81 near Radford showed exactly the sort of road conditions one might expect when an interstate is coated in frozen water and still, somehow, contains automobiles.

The storm proved especially disruptive in far Southwest Virginia near Tennessee, where freezing rain was more substantial. By Sunday evening, more than 10,000 utility customers in Washington County and another 5,000 in Smyth County were without electricity. Elsewhere, prolonged sleet spared much of Virginia from the heavier freezing rain that forecasters had feared, which counts as good news provided the phrase “prolonged sleet” has already appeared in the sentence.

Travel ranged from hazardous to nearly impossible. Virginia State Police reported 177 crashes by 6 a.m. Sunday, including 26 crashes in its Southwest Virginia division, 23 in the Central/Western division and 31 in the Roanoke/Western division. Later counts continued climbing; by the following afternoon, State Police reported 506 crashes and 38 injuries statewide during the storm.

Governor Abigail Spanberger had declared a state of emergency ahead of the system, while President Donald Trump approved Virginia’s request for federal emergency assistance. In other words, state and federal government briefly rediscovered the ancient political doctrine that occasionally the public has a problem too large to solve individually with a shovel and a Facebook Marketplace generator.

The storm itself formed as an upper-level low carried abundant moisture into an Arctic air mass spreading across the central and eastern United States. The colder air proved deeper and more stubborn against the Appalachians than some forecasts expected, allowing sleet to continue longer while warmer air aloft converted much of the original snowfall before it could become the picturesque Appalachian snowstorm imagined by social-media forecast maps earlier in the week.

And, for the record, a serious winter storm does not rebut a warming climate any more than a hot afternoon proves the sun has filed for permanent residency over Christiansburg. Weather remains weather; climate remains the long-term pattern. Southwest Virginia can still get punched in the mouth by January even while the broader climate changes around it.

The immediate concern, however, was considerably less philosophical. The icepack was expected to remain in place as another Arctic front brought gusty winds and temperatures potentially falling into the single digits or below zero in parts of Virginia. Cardinal News meteorologist Kevin Myatt warned that the storm could mark the beginning of one of Virginia’s most wintry stretches in years.

For several days, at least, Southwest Virginia got its old winter back.

Then everybody had to drive in it.