Heavy snow, saturated soil and high winds wreaked havoc on area trees.
PHOTO BY CHARLES WERNER

Between Friday and Saturday night during last weekend’s not-quite-a blizzard, 40,000 Dominion Power customers’ lights went out in the Charlottesville area. The other major power provider for Albemarle County, Central Virginia Electric Cooperative, had between 11,000 and 13,000 households–one third of its members– sitting in the dark.

When such widespread, misery-inducing outages occur (like Hurricane Isabel in 2003), the perennial question pops up: Why aren’t the power lines buried?

“It costs six times more to put power lines underground,” says (more)

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4:24pm Monday update: Dominion has reduced its number of Albemarle powerless by nearly 1,000 since our last count to bring the total to just 2,355. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service points out that there’s a “higher than normal” uncertainty in the weather models, so there’s actually a chance this area will get little or no snow during tomorrow’s event. What’s more certain, however, are the aforementioned high winds.

4:10pm Monday update: More snow video. Nothing dramatically newsworthy here. Previous snow videos.

12:16pm Monday update: According to this nifty interactive map (which most unpowered households can’t possibly see), 3,259 of Dominion’s 39,262 Albemarle customers remain without power at this moment. That’s 8 percent of the company’s County electric buyers.

8:35am Monday update: The map doesn’t lie. Snowfall of greater than five inches is possible in the Charlottesville area, says Kevin Witt, a meteorologist in the Sterling, Virginia weather station. Witt says we can expect sustained winds of 25 mph with gusts up to 30 mph in addition to the snow, which is expected to start mid-morning Tuesday. Unlike the last storm, fortunately, this one isn’t expected to peak in strength until it’s well off the coast.  Still, Witt predicts “a travel mess” and possible further power outages, particularly with strong winds after the snow ends. Sigh…

6:43am Monday update: Well, just when you thought it was safe to get back to normalcy… another snow storm appears likely to dump 3-6 inches here on Tuesday afternoon or evening. Check out this National Weather Service map, which indicates that although the sweet spots— shown in red— lie north of us, we are clearly in the projected snow zone. (And many of us still don’t have power.)

6:22pm Sunday updates: Albemarle County has already called it: NO SCHOOL TOMORROW. Also, emergency officials are asking drivers who are available on Monday to call 979-9912 to volunteer their services.  (The 979-INFO line will close tonight at 9 o’clock and will reopen tomorrow at 6am for a period of time yet to be determined.)

6:10pm Sunday update: According to WINA 11,700 Dominion customers in our area are still out, and 9,000 Central Virginia customers, for a total about 20,000 customers locally in the dark. At the peak, there were 35,000 places without power. That’s an enormous proportion of local customers and may constitute a record. This large an outage— particularly when there are many small outages within subdivisions— will not be cured overnight.

1:02pm Sunday update: Dominion Virginia Power says its crews are working overtime to get power back to the thousands without it. Meanwhile, County spokesperson Lee Catlin says (more)

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One National Weather Service station indicates more snow— but not much.
NWS/BLACKSBURG

So Saturday has almost dawned, and no doubt there are 13,000 very unhappy, power-deprived households right now, but the predicted near-blizzard and its expected record snowfalls and high winds haven’t materialized. At the Hook weather station near Ivy, it’s been lightly raining/misting all night, the temperature is 31, and whatever trace of wind may exist doesn’t even register on our little weather machine. Even the National Weather Service, the folks previously predicting 20-28 inches of blowing snow, have issued a far tamer (but potentially contradictory) report for today. The Sterling office of the Service says we’re to stay under storm watch until 10pm but to expect just one inch of snow, which quits at 7am. (Read it yourself, and see if a report supposedly issued at 4:05am Saturday and mentioning winds “tonight and Saturday” makes sense.) The more assertive Blacksburg office of the NWS has created a snowfall map that— although putting Albemarle slightly outside its bounds— appears to suggest that we’ll get 3-4″ today. And yet another NWS office has created this multi-color map. This all bolsters UVA’s decision to move forward today with its men’s basketball game against Wake Forest.

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A journalist decided to roam from Charlottesville business to business this morning in the opening hours of Snowmageddon to see how shoppers and managers were dealing with lovely little flakes— which will grow in intensity tonight and tomorrow into a record-challenging, or even record-breaking, blizzard.

Since every school system— including the almost-never closed UVA is closed today— as well as most businesses, the Hook would like to publish a running list of things that are OPEN. (Feel free to email editor@readthehook.com with additions, and you may also telephone us at 295-8700×230)

The Free Trolley
The Haven - (the place with the snow shoveling guys) - 973-1234
Bodo’s - downtown
Bodo’s - Corner
Bodo’s - Emmet
Reid Super Save Market
Bellair Market - Ivy Road
Café Cubano - Downtown Mall
Fardowner’s - Crozet
Shenandoah Joe - Ivy Road
Martin Hardware - Preston Avenue
Suds laundromat - Preston Avenue
7-Eleven - Ivy Road
Shell station - Ivy Road
Shell station - Preston Ave

Integral Yoga Natural Food - Preston Avenue

Durty Nelly’s - JPA

Market Street Wine Shop

Riverside Lunch

Boylan Heights - on the Corner
Miller’s - Downtown Mall
Ventana - Downtown Mall
Maya - West Main Street

Earlysville Market

Wahooptie is working in the snow tonight in case people need a ride home:  249-TAXI

Beer Run - Belmont
Bel Rio - Belmont
Rapture - Downtown Mall

Shell - Pantops

UVA men’s basketball game with Wake Forest - noon Saturday

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Here we go again…

They’re not looting just yet, but shoppers panicked by this weekend’s impending whopper of a storm are swarming stores like locusts, leaving shelves barren in their wake.

Lowe’s sold 1,000 shovels yesterday, February 3, and smaller hardware stores are doing an equally brisk business.

“We sold 400 shovels in two hours yesterday,” says Rosemary Johnson at Martin Hardware on Preston Avenue. Sleds, rock salt and flashlights were disappearing, Johnson says, although a shipment due Friday morning of 1,000 shovels and other wintery items provides hope for late-comers (assuming they can reach the store before the roads become impassable).

Across Preston Avenue at Reid Super Save Market, “It’s been crazy for several days,” says assistant manager Kim Miller, adding that supplies, particularly milk and bread, are running low. Like Martin, the store expects a morning delivery to replenish shelves and fill pantries. “It should be here by 7am,” she says, “we’re hoping before the snow.” (more)

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We’re in the deep snow belt (shown in blue), but don’t believe the hype beyond this AccuWeather map from Wednesday morning.
ACCUWEATHER

Punxsutawney Phil could be right. The National Weather Service predicted a 100 percent chance of snow Tuesday night with four to six inches possible. (We got about three.) But this weekend is bringing so much precipitation that UVA climatologist Jerry Stenger says, “It could get ugly.”

When asked about rumors of a 20-inch snowfall for the February 5-7 weekend, Stenger replies, “The models have been suggesting something like this (more)

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The new issue hits newsstands Wednesday afternoon.
HOOK GRAPHIC

“There may be something like horse hair on the body, which would mean that she got there by horseback,” offered a private investigator on a recent episode of TV crime show Nancy Grace . “Perhaps,” he then suggested, “the body was even dropped out of [a] plane into this remote area.”

Such wild speculation brought immediate jeers from Grace, but the remoteness of the location of the remains of 20-year-old Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington is leading to flights of fancy and incessant speculation.

“I’m mystified,” says Dave Bass, owner of 742-acre Anchorage Farm in southern Albemarle County and the man who discovered the skeletonized remains as he checked fences on his property on Tuesday, January 26.

The mystery of Morgan’s final resting place isn’t just about who put her there; it’s about how anyone could have reached such a remote location in the first place. (more)

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