CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Thanksgiving became a day of digging out in parts of West Virginia following heavy snow courtesy of Winter Storm Cato, the system that cutoff other areas as it moved up the East Coast.
According to data from the National Weather Service in Baltimore, Md., snow totals neared 2 feet in areas of the state Wednesday night, when the storm had largely moved north.
A sampling of accumulations from unofficial NWS storm totals that included reports from trained spotters, officials with highway departments, media and other weather observers submitted by Wednesday night:
20 inches: Petersburg, Grant County (2,000 elevation)
20 inches: Paw Paw, Morgan County
17 inches: Deer Run, Pendleton County
15 inches: Sugar Grove, Pendleton County
14 inches: Cherry Grove, Pendleton County
13 inches: Franklin, Pendleton County
10 inches: Lehew, Hampshire County
13.5 inches: Wardensville, Hardy County
9.5 inches: Rig, Hardy County
10 inches: Fort Ashby, Mineral County.
The West Virginia Division of Highways was reporting no major weather-related road closures on Thursday morning. Road crews, though, were still working in the Eastern Mountain and Eastern Panhandle counties.
As of Thanksgiving morning, officials with Mon Power and Potomac Edison said power for approximately 4,000 homes and businesses in West Virginia was still out because of the damage from the storm’s heavy, wet snow.
Overnight into Thursday, service was restored to more than 10,000 locations in West Virginia.
Most of the outages reported for Appalachia Power were in Virginia.
Nationwide, the storm outages totaled 400,000 as of Thursday morning.