“Amazing what a snowfall can do…”

The front of our family's Toyota Sienna, covered in snow after driving through a snowstorm across four states.It doesn’t have to be flakes as big as your fist to make a snowfall have a big impact. On Sunday, January 5, we were returning home from a trip to New Jersey, and it started to snow. First it was just flurries. Then as we continued through Pennsylvania, and through Maryland and West Virginia, it just got worse and worse. Little tiny snowflakes, but they were accumulating on the ground, as well as the road. This brought traffic on Interstate 81 to a much slower speed than otherwise, and caused a lot of accidents on the highway. We saw quite a few cars in odd positions on the side of the road, including sideways in the ditch, front-first in the ditch, and back-first in the ditch. One person was sitting in the center of a rather wide median, facing the correct direction for the northbound lanes. How it got there, I don’t know. We also saw a few fire trucks and ambulances, and lots of police cars. The worst accident we saw, though, was to an SUV. A brown SUV was on the side of the road, upside down. Thankfully, the car was still structurally intact from what I could see, and presuming the people had their seat belts on, they probably were able to walk away from the vehicle. My father said that it probably came about that whoever was driving the SUV probably thought he was like Superman driving that SUV, and rolled it as a result. On another interesting note, what happens on your car when you drive in snow is nothing short of interesting. We drove nonstop through the whole thing at varying speeds, and without running into any snow banks or otherwise hitting something, the front of our Sienna was caked with snow, both from the snow itself, as well as whatever got thrown up from the cars in front of us. Check it out for yourself in the picture at right. It was an amusing sight when we got to the Exxon in Stuarts Draft, and were greeted by the caked front. This picture was taken just before we knocked the stuff off. So as I said before, it’s amazing what a snowfall can do…


Date posted: January 5, 2003