BALTIMORE (WMAR) — As snow started to fall Sunday afternoon, drivers were met with slippery roads, crashes and closures.
“It’s just gotten from bad to worse,” said Bob Smucker.
Smuckers’ trek from South Carolina started at the crack of dawn and going on hour 14, he was just reaching Parkton, another place to take a break.
“I’ve had to stop once an hour just to knock the ice off my wipers,” said Smucker.
He’s more than ready to be back home in Pennsylvania. While his trip ended up longer, the snow meant a shortened vacation for Jenny Burger and her family.
“Our animal care person was afraid of the weather and driving so we came home a little early,” said Burger.
On the home stretch, they got off 83 to avoid an accident and were met with roads in bad shape. But in the icy nightmare, they found hope.
“We were very worried because our vehicle doesn’t do well with snow or hills and we passed a church and it said on the sign ‘Don’t be afraid, just believe' and in that moment, we were turning on York Road and a snow plow came ahead of us. We were so thankful. All the kids were cheering,” said Burger.
Maryland State Highway Administration officials had been anticipating the snow, high winds and slick roads all week, and unlike the last storm, they were able to get out early to pre-treat roads.
“It’s ideal when winter weather starts out as snowfall because that allows us to apply the anti-icing treatment to the roadways before the storm. If we do that before a rain event, the rain just washes away the solution and it’s as if we didn’t do anything, so this one we were able to get ahead with the anti-icing solution because it started out as snowfall not rain first,” said Shanteé Felix, SHA Spokeswoman.
Now, the SHA is in full blown emergency operations mode. Crews are working around the clock to plow the roads though in some places they just couldn’t keep up.
“I saw a couple Mustangs sitting off to the side. Rear wheel drives… not a lot of fun with that,” said Joshua Crew, driving with his kids from Baltimore to PA.
In one instance, Crew pulled over to see what was wrong.
“It was more or less a vehicle problem so we helped them out the best that we could,” said Crew.
MDOT has resources of drivers, including live traffic cameras to check road conditions, as well as the S.T.O.R.M. portal that shows when roads were last treated.
