CHARLESTON, W.Va. — For Liam and Journey, siblings living in Charleston and students at Piedmont Elementary, it was the perfect storm. Nearly a foot of snow was dumped on the Kanawha Valley and many parts of West Virginia Thursday into Friday morning, canceling school and shutting down businesses.
“It’s wonderful, just wonderful. There’s no school and I get to play,” Liam told MetroNews Friday morning.
The children’s mother, Crystal, was shoveling and salting the sidewalk outside of their East End home and attempting to get the kids to help out in the process.
“The kids are off of school so I put them to work shoveling,” she said.
Liam, Journey and their sister Dixie were all chipping in with brooms and shovels but admittedly continuing to play when possible.
“I like to play with Liam and throw snowballs,” Journey said.
Crystal, who moved to Charleston from the Clarksburg area nearly a year ago, said it’s been a while since she has seen this amount of snow.
“This amount of snow I have not seen since four years ago in Clarksburg. In Logan County, it was kind of a norm growing up but I have not seen this in a while,” she said.
Like Crystal and her family, Tim Kidd of St. Albans was shoveling out of the snow. He was busy working Friday morning out front of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Charleston.
“Today (Friday) it took me 45 minutes to get from St. Albans to Charleston and now we’re clearing the sidewalks off,” Kidd said.
He added that it’s the most snow he has seen in the area in six to eight years. As of Friday morning, he issued a warning for motorists traveling in Kanawha County.
“The roads are still bad. Cars are parked off the sides of the road, I guess they got stranded,” Kidd said.
Nearly all 55 county school systems in West Virginia were forced to close Friday due to the weather.
In Charleston, the city closed City Hall, the City Service Center, Parks & Recreation facilities and other administrative offices on Friday. The Kanawha County Judicial Building closed for the entire day Friday. Circuit Court, Family Court, Magistrate Court and the Circuit Clerk’s Offices at the building will not be open.
The National Weather Service in Charleston indicates as much as 10.5 inches of snow fell around the capital city.
Preliminary Review of January 6-7, 2022 Winter Stormhttps://t.co/HhlD2AZWMM
Many thanks to the emergency managers, SKYWARN weather spotters, CoCoRaHS observers, Cooperative Weather Observers and public for their reports!#wvwx #ohwx #kywx #vawx pic.twitter.com/BdOz9gB5ZA
— NWS Charleston, WV (@NWSCharlestonWV) January 7, 2022