KEYSER — Area residents are dealing with a storm that dropped more snow in some places than the December 19 blizzard of last year. The wallop that began Friday morning kept piling on the flakes through Saturday, with some reports of snowfall of 30 inches or more.
“This is a lot bigger than December,” Keyser Mayor Sonny Rhodes said. “We weren’t prepared for that one. But we had notice on this one and were prepared.”
Crews went to work Friday to keep roads cleared even as the unrelenting snow made the task a repetitive loop. As Saturday’s skies cleared, progress began.
“We’ve got a handle on things,” Rhodes said Sunday. “Getting rid of the snow is the biggest thing.”
City workers and contractors are moving gathered snow to a railroad property across the tracks, in addition to pushing back and piling snow away from well-trafficked parts of town.
“Most main arteries are open now,” the mayor reported. “We’ve had a few complaints, but we’re doing the best we can.”
Sunday, crews tackled alleys, always last on the city’s snow removal plan. They also worked on Main Street, with Mineral Fab, one of the contractors for the city, closing off one section at a time to clear the roadways down to the pavement.
“We still need businesses to
clear their sidewalks,” Rhodes said.
He said amid the storm cleanup, two plows broke, one on the dump truck and one on the 250 truck, which he thinks ran over a log.
“We had to pull it out,” he said of the 250. “The steering is torn up and the frame is bent. I don’t think it can be saved.”
Gov. Joe Manchin declared a state of emergency Friday afternoon and Rhodes hopes because of that the city might be reimbursed for some of the snow removal.
Despite the breakdowns and one of the largest storms ever to hit the city, Rhodes is pleased with the progress.
“Jim Hannas and his crew have done a great job,” he said. “They’ve been out over 20 hours, from the start on Friday morning. They went home, took a break, and went right back to it all day Saturday and into Sunday.”
The city plans on working Armstrong St. downtown Sunday evening, hoping to have the road cleared and passable by Monday morning.
Though not the largest on record, the weekend storm begs comparison to some doozies the area has seen over the years.
Bill Pancake, a Keyser resident who reports to the National Weather Service, measured the weekend’s storm at 30.2 inches.
“That’s the equivalent of 2.53 inches of rain,” he said Sunday.
A big difference of this recent storm and the one in December — and if you’ve had a shovel in your hands in the last 72 hours, you know — is that this storm brought heavier, wetter snow.
Pancake says that, on average, every foot of snow is equal to an inch of rain, but that measurement can be skewed when the moisture level is high, as in this storm. He estimates that the new rubric might be an inch of rain for every 6-8 inches of snow, key to measuring potential flooding when the snow melts.
The flat-rate measurement might be 30.2 inches, but Pancake says that isn’t quite accurate.
“When I measure, I level off every eight inches and begin again,” he says, noting that as the snow falls, the bottom layers get compacted and give inaccurate rates of snowfall. With this in mind, Pancake estimates some areas may’ve seen 36.7 inches over the weekend.
He compares the storm to one in 1962, when in began snowing early March 5 and ended the afternoon of March 6. We got 38 inches of wet, heavy snow during that period.
More contemporarily, Pancake says the storm in February 2003 is another benchmark storm in the greater Mineral County area.
Pancake notes these snowfalls for context:
Nov. 24-30, 1950:
57 inches of snow in Pickens, W.Va.
March 5-6, 1962
38 inches — The year the airplane hanger in Burlington collapsed, destroying about five airplanes
February 15-18, 2003
32.9 inches 35 straight hours of snow — The year Boggs Supply fell in; recorded 35 straight hours of snowfall
February 5-6, 2010
30.2 inches
March 13, 1993:
21 inches
Dec. 19, 2009:
21 inches
Keyser, W.Va. —
