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Winter Storm Fern stopped dropping snow and sleet on Northern Virginia by Monday morning, Jan. 26, but its impact only intensified as a prolonged freeze transformed the accumulation into pavement-bound “ice-crete.”
The storm began late Saturday, Jan. 24, with light snowfall while residents slept. Heavy accumulation followed Sunday, Jan. 25, leaving as much as 4 inches of sleet in the Herndon-Vienna area. The National Weather Service identified it as the D.C. region’s highest single-storm sleet total since February 1994.
Conditions that ordinarily allow snow and slush to melt never arrived. By 9 a.m. Monday, Feb. 2, Dulles International Airport had recorded more than 150 consecutive hours below freezing. The sustained cold prevented the early slush from draining and instead bonded it to pavement in solid sheets.
Primary roads were mostly passable by Feb. 2, but frozen mounds continued to obstruct neighborhood streets, sidewalks and many of Fairfax County Public Schools’ 45,000 bus stops. Some students could not safely reach their stops because the sidewalks were effectively impossible to shovel.
Schools remained closed through Feb. 2, marking the sixth day students had missed because of Fern. That placed the storm among Northern Virginia’s most disruptive winter events, alongside the 2010 “Snowmageddon” blizzard, which closed schools for eight days; the Blizzard of 1996, which caused a seven- to eight-day closure; and the 2016 blizzard known as Jonas, which kept students home for six days.
The week’s progression showed how quickly an ordinary-looking snowfall became an extended ordeal. On Jan. 25, Matt Springmann and his eldest son, Felix, walked through soft snow in Fairfax County before the storm developed into a historic ice event that disrupted the region for more than a week.
By Jan. 27, clearing a driveway required repeated attacks on the frozen surface, with even a pickax producing only a few feet of progress. A balaclava, gloves and two pairs of boots dried on a radiator between attempts. Blocked sidewalks also kept Oshi, a Pomeranian, indoors with her toy as she searched for a patch of sunlight from the back of a sofa.
Signs of the lingering storm remained visible Jan. 30, when a Town of Herndon police cruiser waited at a red light with snow still covering its roof. Snow or hardened ice left atop a vehicle can endanger drivers traveling behind it.
A hydrangea bush coated in ice and snow remained upright in Fairfax County on Jan. 31 despite the heavy accumulation and persistent cold.
By Feb. 1, the freeze had created an unusual sight at Lake Anne in Reston: a couple walking across the frozen surface. Such conditions are rare in the Fairfax County community, underscoring how far Fern’s effects extended beyond the final precipitation.