Wintry weather arrived early in the Baltimore area yesterday as the heaviest snowstorm in three years blanketed the region with as many problems as snowdrifts: shutting down schools, causing serious accidents and reacquainting Marylanders with slush, ice and cold.
"It's been several years since we had a significant storm, and we have a lot of citizens who aren't used to this," said state Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari. "Lots of them are driving SUVs and they forget that four-wheel drive does not suspend the laws of physics."
The Baltimore region got about as much snow yesterday as in the past two years combined. Snow started falling about 2 a.m. and continued for more than 12 hours, leaving 7 inches at Baltimore-Washington International Airport and as much as 9 inches in other parts of Maryland.
Winter doesn't officially begin until Dec. 22, but Marylanders would never know it - they spent much of yesterday sledding, shoveling and skidding along sidewalks and highways. Snow fell so heavily in places that the city and the five metropolitan county school systems, as well as many elsewhere in Maryland, are canceling classes again today.
Problems have been reported everywhere: from the airport, where a plane full of Southwest Airlines passengers waited five hours for a runway to be deiced, to Moravia Road in Baltimore, where two Maryland Transportation Authority police officers suffered minor injuries after being hit by a car while assisting a disabled motorist.
Southwest Airlines ran out of deicing fluid at BWI about 1 p.m., stranding passengers in planes on the taxiways and deicing pads. Company spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said Southwest went through 24,000 gallons of glycol - an entire season's supply - in one day. More was to arrive last night.
"We know those customers have been here for a while, so our priority now ... is to clear as many away from the airport as we can," Rutherford said last night.
The storm developed from a disturbance that came ashore in California last weekend and tracked eastward. Colliding with cold Canadian air entrenched from the Great Plains to the Atlantic, it spread rain, snow, sleet and ice from Oklahoma to the Carolinas. Redeveloping off Cape Hatteras yesterday, it drove more snowy weather northward into New England.
The brunt of the snow arrived in Maryland at the worst possible time - morning rush hour, when snowplows cannot get to all the roads. Dozens of vehicles were stuck or abandoned on highways, and accidents, particularly jackknifed tractor-trailers, closed some major roads.
A portion of northbound Interstate 95 was shut down for about 40 minutes around noon yesterday when a tractor-trailer jackknifed on the Millard Tydings Bridge between Harford and Cecil counties. The truck blocked all three lanes and traffic backed up for three miles, state police said.
Among many other mishaps, three lanes of the Capital Beltway's inner loop in Prince George's County were closed at 1:37 p.m. because of a jackknifed tractor-trailer. And last night, near Annapolis, the eastbound lanes of U.S. 50 were shut down for cleanup of an oil spill after a collision between a sport utility vehicle and tractor-trailer. The driver of the sport utility vehicle was sent to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, police reported.
The big problem, said Deputy John Edwards of the Harford County Sheriff's Office, was that people weren't careful. Cars were sliding into ditches from Fallston to Havre de Grace, he said.
"If you hit a patch of ice in the road, it doesn't make a difference if you're driving a tank, you're going to lose control," he said. "You're going to make the towing company and the body shops very happy."
Amtrak trains were packed yesterday as travelers along the East Coast abandoned airplanes for the rails.
But dozens of delayed passengers lined ticket counters at BWI, awaiting word on when they might be able to rebook a flight. Snow and icy conditions throughout the East Coast, particularly in the Southeast, stranded fliers bound for Atlanta, and had a ripple effect on travelers around the country.
A trio of teen-agers made the most of a long line at the Delta ticket counter as Jessica Hardy, 17, waited to reschedule her flight to Phoenix, which had been canceled hours earlier. Hardy had spent the past two weeks in Perry Hall visiting her best friends Michelle Ressler, 17, and Lisa Inskeep, 19. "I'm hoping my flight is delayed all the way 'til Saturday so I can go play in the snow and have a snowball fight," Hardy said.
Airport woes continued last night. A passenger on American Airlines Flight 4751 from Little Rock, Ark., reported by cell phone about 10 p.m. that she and about 40 others were trapped in the plane on the runway for about three hours because there was no empty terminal bay for them to disembark.
City and county officials hunkered down in storm bunkers yesterday, dispatching snowplows and salt trucks by the hundreds.
At the city's "Storm Center" at 620 Fallsway, more than a dozen administrators clicked away at computers and answered phones around a horseshoe-shaped table in a room whose walls were plastered with maps and charts.
On an 8-foot-wide screen, 75 pink dots - each a plow labeled with a four-digit number - traced green, red and blue lines across a street map of the city. About half of the fleet carries electronic devices that automatically broadcast their locations to the command center, allowing administrators to track their progress.
'Stay ahead'
In his first public test since taking office as Baltimore County executive, James T. Smith Jr. was out before dawn looking over snow removal efforts with his highway bureau chief.
Baltimore County Administrative Officer John Wasilisin said officials didn't expect so much snow, or that it would accumulate so quickly. But, he said, "We've been able to stay ahead of it."
Motorists' reviews of snowplowing performance on state highways and local roads varied. With so many people deciding to stay home, some drivers said it took them no longer than usual to get to work.
Catonsville resident Dick Dunning said it took him 35 minutes to get from his home to Canton. "On the Beltway and 95, it was moving steadier than usual," said Dunning, 56, a project manager for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "Usually, it's stop and go. ... But today it was a constant 20 to 25 mph."
Others had a more difficult time. Meg Alt, 18, said it took her about two hours to drive 10 miles in the Annapolis area. She was slowed when her pickup truck skidded into a ditch. A friend helped push her out.
Roger Jansen of Parkville said he got the run-around when he tried to complain to the Baltimore County Executive's office about the snow on his street.
"This is the first time in the 27 years that I've lived here that we haven't had a salt truck down my street when it's been this long into a snow event," he said.
Slowdown of shoppers
Businesses did their best to handle the sudden drop of customers in the middle of the holiday shopping season.
Bob Danaher of College Park, decked out in Santa Claus garb, had a quiet morning at The Mall in Columbia. Only two children had stopped by his post in front of Lord & Taylor by lunchtime yesterday. Usually by that time, droves of children would have been lining up to swear to a year of goodness.
Those who didn't have to go to work seemed happiest about the snow yesterday.
John Jackson, 72, of Charles Village said his Cadillac De Ville would have no trouble busting through the wall of snow that plows had pushed next to his wheels. But he didn't plan on making his escape any time soon. "It's a good day to be retired," the former steel mill worker said. "You get to go out only if you want to."
Bruce Carlin tried to get to work yesterday morning, but when he found himself stuck in Federal Hill - miles from his Towson office - what was he to do?
The Rasmussen-Whitford Group lobbyist called a friend and headed down to the Cross Street Market for some late-morning oysters and beer.
"It's just a nice place to meet some folks, come down, have some oysters and drink some beer," Carlin said.
Sun staff writers Laura Barnhardt, Julie Bykowitz, Ryan Davis, Lisa Goldberg, Sheridan Lyons, Tom Pelton, Frank D. Roylance and Laurie Willis contributed to this article.