As the second big snowstorm of the winter began dropping flakes on the US capital Friday, panicked parents grabbed their kids early from school and headed home to brace for what locals are calling "Snowpocalypse." Many stopped off at supermarkets to stock up on last-minute provisions, but found others had already beaten them to it, emptying shelves of everything from soup to Super Bowl snacks and sidewalk salt.
Holly Bailey, a writer who lives in Washington's upscale Georgetown neighbourhood, described scenes of chaos at a local Whole Foods shop as genteel Washingtonians lost their cool in their rush to beat the big snow. "The parking lot is road-rage central and there are people running down the street with bags trying to get in the store," Bailey told AFP.
"Yesterday, at one point they shut the store because there were so many people inside and they were letting in customers one-by-one as others came out. It was chaos. People were yelling. It was like a scene from a disaster movie," she said. Jane Bate, 41, who emigrated to the United States from the Philippines in March, headed out to a local supermarket early Friday after neighbours warned her to prepare for the worst.
"I got there at 7:00 am and there were really long queues, and the place looked like it had been ransacked, especially the meat and veg sections," she told AFP. "People are panicking. The shelves are almost empty. People are hoarding things like bottled water and canned food." Courts, schools, government offices, even military bases closed early Friday to beat the snowstorm which slithered northward through the state of Virginia and hit the capital and Maryland at around 11:00 am (1700 GMT).
The forecast was for the snow to continue through the night and into Saturday, by which time meteorologists are saying up to 28 inches (71 centimeters) of snow could have been dumped on the area - which does not cope very well with even small amounts of the white stuff.
Last year, then newly sworn-in President Barack Obama scoffed at Washington's tendency to panic over a few snowflakes after classes at his daughters' school were cancelled because of "some ice." In Chicago, the Obamas' hometown, "school is never cancelled," the president told reporters, saying "folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things when it comes to the weather." But this storm was different, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday as the rate at which the flakes were falling picked up. "Even a transplanted Hawaiian through Chicago has sufficient respect for a forecast of nearly two feet of snow," Gibbs said of Obama.
Karen Morgan, a Canadian who lives in the Washington suburb of Rockville, watched snow fall on her car windscreen as she waited to pick up her 12-year-old twins from school, which let out early on Friday. "I don't ever recall having school cancelled in Canada, and the first week I moved here, at the end of junior high, I stood at the school bus stop for an hour until one of the neighbours remembered we were from Canada and came out and told me that school was cancelled," Morgan told AFP.
Washington needs only another 18.7 inches (47.5 centimeters) of snow before it can call this winter the snowiest in 100 years, television meteorologist Brian van de Graaff said. Back in 1898-99, the Washington area had 54.4 inches of snow, he said on the website of WTOP radio. Commuter trains and buses, and hundreds of flights out of the area's three airports were cancelled Friday and into the weekend.
The Washington Metro warned it would stop running above-ground trains when there was eight inches of snow on the tracks. The governors of Virginia and Maryland have declared a state of emergency, a move that puts the National Guard on alert.