Fairfax County Public Schools resumed regular classes on Monday (Feb. 9) for the first time since a double whammy of snow and ice hit the D.C. region in late January, but many students still encounter blocked sidewalks and intersections on the way to their school or bus stop.
That was the case earlier this week in the Franklin Farm neighborhood near Herndon, where sidewalks around a school bus stop at Old Dairy Road and Tyburn Tree Court remained stubbornly covered in ice.
“Right now we have to choose between walking on ice (one child slipped and fell yesterday) or walking in the narrow road,” one resident told FFXnow by email on Tuesday (Feb. 10). “I am a single mom and I already shoveled all of my property and helped neighbors in my area, but I don’t really have the capacity to go shovel the unshoveled stretches by the bus stop.”
When the resident reported the conditions, they received conflicting feedback on who’s responsible for removing snow from sidewalks. The homeowners’ association pointed to the Virginia Department of Transportation, which owns the road, while VDOT says the onus for clearing sidewalks and other pedestrian areas lies with the adjacent property owner.
“If there happens to be an accessibility issue with an ADA requirement, we will tend to it on a case-by-case basis, but we do not clear snow and ice from sidewalks. That is left to the property owners to take care of,” VDOT Northern Virginia communications manager Alex Liggitt said when asked about the situation in Franklin Farm, adding that the department will “follow up” with the HOA.
Unlike neighboring Arlington and Alexandria, however, Fairfax County has no ordinance legally requiring property owners to clear snow from walkways, though HOAs can set and enforce their own rules. Instead, the county encourages residents and businesses to do their part to keep their community safe.
After assessing VDOT and county staff’s clean-up efforts over the preceding week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors proposed establishing a volunteer snow removal program at its Feb. 3 meeting. Similar to the Snow Buddy Program in Alexandria City, the initiative would enlist volunteers to help shovel snow for seniors, people with disabilities and other community members who need assistance.
Expanded regional snow removal plan needed, officials say
The Jan. 24-25 storm — informally named Winter Storm Fern by the Weather Channel — made clear that the D.C. region needs a comprehensive snow removal strategy to augment traditional plowing efforts, D.C. City Administrator Kevin Donahue said Wednesday (Feb. 11) at a roundtable on the recovery efforts.
Organized by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), the roundtable saw elected and administrative leaders from around the region collaboratively discussing on ways to respond better to crippling weather, rather than throwing verbal snowballs at one another.
While he acknowledged there’s likely “plenty of blame that could go around,” COG chair Reuben Collins II said the 90-minute session was “not intended as an opportunity to point fingers or assign blame,” but instead to “help prepare for future events.”
The region was pummeled by an unusual winter combination: several inches of snow, then additional inches of sleet, all cemented into place by days of extremely cold temperatures.
After fielding criticism for a perceived lack of responsiveness to city neighborhoods, D.C. officials began trucking snow and ice to the grounds of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, awaiting warmer temperatures to melt it down.
With the packs of “snowcrete” only just starting to thaw, Donahue noted that, even now, “we’re still in the tail end of the event. We’re not fully out of it.”
“If it had been a normal storm, I’m sure we would have been able to do our normal good job,” said Richard Madaleno, chief administrative officer of Montgomery County.
“This was a storm that was unfamiliar to us all,” he said.
Many D.C.-area school systems, including FCPS, canceled classes for the entire week following the storm — or longer — which meant “people were sitting at home with their kids, getting more tired and frustrated,” Madaleno said.
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Executive Vice President Leroy Jones said the transit agency would like to see a regional look at strategies to clear bus stops of snow and ice for traveler safety.
Intersections blocked by mounds of snow plowed to the side also made it difficult for Metrobuses to make turns, requiring detours to continue for more than a week.
According to Jones, WMATA was able to transport 1.5 million passengers from Sunday, Jan. 25 through Thursday, Jan. 29 — a period when much of the region remained shut down. Still, not everything ran according to plan, he acknowledged.
“Even with the best plans, we have to be nimble enough to pivot,” Jones said.
Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins suggested regional leaders need to get up to speed on messaging strategies in an era of short attention spans.
“Videos as short messages are where people get [information] now — a minute or less,” said Gaskins, a COG vice chair.
The lack of rancor throughout most of the meeting provided the chance to “recognize what went right” as well as analyze what didn’t, said D.C. City Council member Charles Allen, COG’s other vice chair.
Allen said a constant stream of negativity would only demoralize those who went above and beyond the call of duty to keep the region moving during the storm and its aftermath.
John Scrivani, Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s recently appointed state coordinator of the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, pointed to the storm’s size and a quickly evolving forecast that made planning challenging.
At first, the National Weather Service “was telling us we were facing a catastrophic storm,” he said. “They kept changing the forecast on us, kept moving that snow/ice line further north, further north. So, we kept adjusting our response plan accordingly.”
“I know a lot of people are still upset,” Scrivani said, but “we can’t prevent an ice storm. This was Texas to Boston. It was a massive event.”
Scrivani praised the public across the commonwealth for heeding warnings and giving state crews and contractors the chance to address the situation.
“We asked the folks to stay off the roads, and they did. We were able to get those main roadways cleared,” he said.
State officials will use the experience to have “plans and procedures in place to try and recover quicker” in the future, Scrivani said.
Regional leaders plan to circle back on the issue for more discussion, according to Collins, a member of the Charles County Board of County Commissioners in Maryland.
“We’ll definitely make this a follow-up,” he said.
Another major winter event — the blizzard of 1987 — that spurred officials from across Northern Virginia, suburban Maryland and D.C. to begin more closely collaborating on how they respond to winter weather.
For the 2025-2026 season, about 280 people met in a pre-winter briefing session, and collaboration has continued, Eli Russ, a senior public safety planner for COG, said.
