In late June, Rachel and set our plans for Christmas travel. We were to fly from BWI at 1:55PM on December 19th on Southwest through Phoenix en route to Portland. It was a great plan. We would have all morning on Saturday to brave the traffic on DC’s inner loop. We didn’t have to worry about flying through a location prone to receiving snow (e.g. Chicago). And the tickets were cheap. It was perfect.
It was perfect.
It was perfect until about 9AM on Thursday when my office-mate at work told me that Accuweather was forecasting 8 inches of snow for Saturday. Not everyone was forecasting snow and frequently the forecasts overstate things. I wasn’t too worried about the flight, but I was worried about the drive to the airport. So in no time I reserved a room near the airport so that Rachel and I could drive up Friday night and easily make it to the airport on Saturday.
And then the other forecasts started to agree with Accuweather.
And then the other forecasts began to forecast more snow than Accuweather. It began to appear that Saturday afternoon flights didn’t have a chance. Friday morning I decided it was worthwhile to spend extra on upgraded tickets that left at 8AM. I reckoned this had two advantages. 1) There was less time for snow to accumulated, and 2) the plane wouldn’t be flying in from somewhere else in the morning (and thus have to land, which is always difficult to do in the snow).
At that point it wasn’t supposed to start snowing in Northern Virginia until about 10PM. That left plenty of time for us to drive to BWI.
However, as it happened, the snow hit Charlottesville much earlier, right around rush hour. Traffic was so bad that it took Rachel about 3 hours to get out of town. It made it impossible to get out ahead of the storm. It took her about 7 hours to drive the approximately 100 miles to my house.
Once at my house, we switched cars. It was right around midnight. There were only about two inches of now there so we were easily able to get moving. The beltway (aka Inner Loop, AKA I-495) was a mess as usual. A semi and some cars were stuck at a choke point that slowed us down for a bit. I had to laugh at the many drivers of luxury cars who couldn’t climb hills. Good job dumbasses!
We eventually arrived at our hotel near 3AM after about 3 hours on the road. At that point, Rachel had spent about 10 hours traveling to cover about 150 miles.
After grabbing a couple hours sleep, we were out the door by 6AM. The hotel shuttle to the airport was still running. Apparently it had already taken and returned some travelers who were upset to find that their flights had been cancelled. The hotel workers were apparently announcing that all the flights were cancelled, even if the airlines said differently. Nonetheless, I carefully cleared off my car and got us loaded up. We plowed through some piles left by the plow and got moving.
In relatively short order we were at the airport, through check-in, through security, and waiting on some breakfast at the Silver Diner. At this point, the flight was still scheduled and if Southwest didn’t intend to fly it, they sure were hiding it well. Our hopes were dashed a bit when a delay was announced. BWI had only one operating runway and they were having a hard time keeping it cleared. Shortly thereafter though we got the go ahead to board. We got on the plane and were further delayed by some plows in our way and the mandatory de-icing. But we eventually made it to the runway and took off.
Holy cow! We escaped DC during it’s worst December storm ever!
We made it to Vegas (our new stopover destination) only 20 minutes behind schedule. The whole eastern half of the country was covered by clouds. Vegas was fine. I won $4 playing the slots. The flight to Portland went off without a hitch. Saturday was a lucky day for me.
We later learned that nearly every flight out of the DC area was cancelled. Now, on Monday morning, we’re not sure that we would have been able to leave by now if our flight had been cancelled. Everyone I know has reported between 16 and 20 of inches of snowfall in the area. I’m not sure if my street has even been plowed. So I’m definitely considering myself lucky at this point. All-in-all, this was much better than last year’s adventure, although it certainly could have gone just as badly. I’m betting there will still be snow on the ground in Virginia when we get home a week from now.
