ROMNEY, W.Va. — Heavy, wet snow crippled travel on Thanksgiving eve in parts of West Virginia. An Atlantic Coast storm that hit the coast with rain and sleet was all snow in West Virginia’s eastern mountains.
“It’s coming down so fast DOH can’t keep up with it,” Hampshire County emergency dispatcher Jennifer Bishoff told MetroNews from her Romney dispatch center Wednesday morning. “Right now DOH is just hitting the main roads.”
The same could be said for Pocahontas County where Office of Emergency Management Director Shawn Dunbrack took a few minutes from helping dispatchers to tell MetroNews his county was quickly covered up with snow Wednesday morning.
“We’ve been really busy here. There’s probably at least five or six inches out here (in Marlinton) of heavy wet snow,” he said.
The accumulation totals varied but it appears to be anywhere between and 8 and 12 inches in most areas. The heavy snow was also creating power outage problems. The customers without service were beginning to build by mid-morning.
The DOH was advising motorists not to travel certain routes like U.S. Route 219, U.S. Route 220 and routes 33 and 72 Wednesday afternoon to allow snow plows to remove snow.
Mon Power reported 16,000 customers without service Wednesday afternoon, more than 5,000 of those in Pocahontas County.
U.S. Route 219 in Pocahontas County had to be closed twice because of accidents. Bishoff said U.S. Route 50 looked like a demolition course with various cars turned sideways and in ditches. She said an ambulance crew had a hard time getting from Romney to Winchester, Va.
“It was a cardiac patient and they had to weave their way down Route 50 eastbound in between vehicles that couldn’t come up hills and things like that,” Bishoff said.
Small totals were also significant in Morgan, Tucker, Preston, Randolph, Mineral and surrounding counties.
The National Weather Service said most southern and central counties were spared major snow totals because the day began above the freezing mark. The DOH reported interstates 77 and 79 were for the most part wet with some slick spots on one of the busiest travel days of the year.