ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 8, 1996 TAG: 9601100115
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
WHETHER THEY HAD to go to work in it, chose to go play in it, or decided to not even open the front door all day, Southwest Virginians coped with the biggest snowfall in years in their own way Sunday.
While children thanked the snow gods for a dumping that could shut down schools for days and make every hill a playground, drivers raised their fists to the sky.
Everywhere in the Roanoke Valley, half-buried vehicles stuck out of side streets and corners into roadways at crazy angles, where they'd been abandoned like so many useless cast-offs.
Many residents trying to get a jump on their shoveling didn't wait for the flakes to stop falling. They were out Sunday afternoon, trying in vain to unearth their vehicles and walkways, leaning hard on their shovels and nursing back aches.
Every street sported borders of huge white humps; underneath were hidden vehicles that someday soon may be useful to their owners again.
Even four-wheel-drive vehicles could offer only so much help against snowdrifts more than two feet deep. Roanoke city crews had to help free a snowplow stuck in a bank.
- JAN VERTEFEUILLE
Early Sunday afternoon, Virginia 419 looked more like a mountain trail than a four-lane highway. Two Virginia Department of Transportation plows were trying to keep the road passable, but the big yellow machines were fighting a losing battle against the falling snow.
"Not much we can do," said Richard Britts, leaning against the side of his truck. He reached up and knocked some ice from his windshield wipers. "Just keep pushing it off."
He and Casey Caldwell, the driver of the second truck, had been out since 7:30 Sunday morning, plowing and replowing the same stretch of 419, between Lewis-Gale Hospital and U.S. 221.
Caldwell just shook his head.
"Worked 12 hours yesterday, and it doesn't look like we accomplished anything," he said. He had plowed until 7:30 Saturday night, then had to spend the night in a Roanoke hotel because he couldn't get back over Catawba Mountain to his house.
"Never seen anything quite like this," he said.
- MEGAN SCHNABEL
Most pedestrians seen on streets around the Roanoke Valley seemed to be engaged in one of two activities - romping in the snow or walking back from a convenience store.
Shoppers said they were stocking up on the basics. For many, the basics included a six-pack or two.
"I'm going to be out of work the next couple days and I'm going to make a snowman with my kids," said one shopper who walked into the Uni-Mart on Thompson Memorial Drive to buy a case of Milwaukee's Best and a pack of Virginia Slims. "This is vacation for me, I guess."
The bread aisle had been picked over at the Kroger in Lakeside Plaza, one of the few grocery stores that was open Sunday. The store stayed open till 4 p.m., when the store was forced to close because not enough employees were able to make it into work. Assistant Manager Gene Bowles said he'd been picking up workers since 5 a.m.
Shoppers who trickled in - either in four-wheel-drive vehicles or on foot - were grateful to find the store open.
"I'd have thought everybody would be here Friday or Saturday," Bowles said.
At the Uni-Mart, manager Dan Keith and assistant manager Jannie Chapman had camped out in the store since Saturday night. They planned to sleep in shifts to keep going till the snow let up.
Business was double what they usually see on a Sunday, with most customers arriving on foot and spending about $20 each. The biggest sellers, they said: hot dogs, milk, eggs, cigarettes and beer.
Were any of the drivers buying gas?
"Oh," asked Chapman, "are there people driving?"
- JAN VERTEFEUILLE
In Blacksburg, there were more people on Main Street than cars Sunday, each of them armed with a sled and a camera. People posed for pictures in the street, beside drifts and next to tunnels they'd made through the snow.
By 3 p.m., 7-Eleven, which was quickly selling out of bread and other staples, had only five rolls of film left in stock.
In some areas, snow drifted to the tops of parking meters, and it was hard to spot the wooden benches that sit along the streets downtown.
"I discovered a new mode of transportation," said Jarrod Leland, a Virginia Tech entomology student who was sliding down Montgomery Street on cross country skis. His dogs, Lexy and Clementine, were hooked by ropes to his waist, tugging him along.
"This is the first time I've ever tried this," he said, as the dogs went one way in the snow and he went another.
A few essential businesses, like the video store, remained open during the day.
At King Video, which is changing its name to Moovies Inc., there were few new releases on the shelves, but plenty of older movies, and plenty of walkers renting them.
The parking lot had only one pair of tire tracks.
"Everything was gone by mid-afternoon yesterday," said Danielle Heineman, the manager. She and shift manager Melissa Carr live a block from the store. They were the only ones working through the storm.
A few restaurants and bars also opened their doors.
The Underground, a pub in downtown Blacksburg, had this sign in its window:
"Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night, nor blizzard, nor partial federal government shutdown will keep these beer slingers from their appointed rounds. Yes, we're open."
- BRIAN KELLEY and MADELYN ROSENBERG
The Revco drugstore at Towers Shopping Center in Roanoke was one of few pharmacies in the Roanoke Valley that was filling prescriptions Sunday.
But most of the customers who had braved the snow were in search of necessities of another kind.
"Cigarettes, beer, snacks," said Judith Jamison, who was tending the cash register.
Melissa Swartz and three of her friends waited in line, their arms loaded with potato chips, beer and wine coolers. They had walked over from Swartz's house on Colonial Avenue. Actually, they had walked about halfway, and then a friend had picked them up in a four-wheel-drive Bronco.
"We almost slid into a cop," she said. "That was cool."
She already knew that she wouldn't have to go to work today, and she was ready to enjoy her mini-vacation.
Jamison was less excited about the blizzard.
"I've been here since 9 last night," she said with a grimace. "And I don't know how I'm getting home."
- MEGAN SCHNABEL
Russell Zellner, an avid biker who rode across the country this past summer, hopped on his bike Sunday afternoon to get from his rented room in Blacksburg to his house in Shawsville.
"It's good for the visual effects, but as far as riding, it's terrible," Zellner said as he rode uphill on Ellett Road.
"But it's still worth playing in," he added.
- ELISSA MILENKY
All the dogs, cats and hamsters in the Roanoke Valley are lucky to have someone like Steve Karras looking out for them.
Karras, a veterinarian at Cave Spring Veterinary Clinic, strapped on a pair of cross-country skis so he could get to the clinic Sunday afternoon.
It's good exercise, he said, pausing to catch his breath. Besides, he's a doctor, he said, and he had patients to tend to, blizzard or no.
It's 2 1/2 miles from his house to the clinic down Brambleton Avenue. Takes him about 40 minutes to ski there. He knows, because he's done it before. During the blizzard of 1993, he had to ski to work a few times. But that storm didn't compare to the one that hit this weekend, he said.
"This is the worst I've ever seen Brambleton," he said. He was the only staff member who was able to get to the clinic at all this weekend, he said.
He planned to make another trip to the clinic Sunday evening, if the weather didn't get any worse. And the clinic would be open today, with a limited staff.
"I'm one of those emergency services they talk about, I guess," he said.
- MEGAN SCHNABEL
Todd Lancaster and Carolyn Roberts had no intention of letting the snowstorm keep them trapped at home. Early Sunday afternoon, the snow-booted, scarf-wrapped duo were trudging down the middle of Franklin Road, heading toward downtown from Old Southwest.
"We're going down to Awful Arthur's," Lancaster said. "We're going to have a couple of beers and watch the game."
Was the restaurant really open? In the middle of a blizzard?
"Well, I'm the owner," he said.
Ah.
"All of the employees are getting together," he said. The downtown Roanoke restaurant is open seven days a week, so this would be one of the few times the workers could have the place to themselves.
"We get to eat our own oysters today," he said.
- MEGAN SCHNABEL
While the rest of the world struggled with limited success to maneuver in the snow, Linda Boitnott and Allen Lazenby were zipping around on the preferred mode of transportation Sunday. The friends were cruising the streets on snowmobiles - street legal and definitely superior to anything with wheels this weekend.
Lazenby said he and friends had been out till 4 a.m. Sunday racing around. Sunday afternoon, he and Boitnott headed out from his Northwood Drive home to restock; they needed groceries and more gas for the snowmobile so they could continue riding into this morning.
They had cruised all over town in the early hours Sunday morning and planned to do it again that night. Lazenby wasn't worried about his sleep; he drives a truck for a living. It was one form of transportation that he knew wouldn't be mobile for at least another day or two.
- JAN VERTEFEUILLE
Chris Henth and Tom Stiess did not let the weather interfere with their coffee break at Gillie's Confectionery in Blacksburg. The two men, bundled up in heavy coats and hats, made their way across Main Street in cross country skis.
"We decided to dust off our skis," said Stiess, a Blacksburg resident. "We weren't going in their cars."
"I'm hoping this will keep up so I don't have to go to work tomorrow," added Stiess, who works at a consulting firm in Princeton, W.Va.
- ELISSA MILENKY
Mere shovels weren't enough for some people combatting the snow. Residents trying futilely to dig themselves out resorted to some innovative tools - trash cans, plastic sleds, pieces of plywood, even a cooking pot - in search of maximum scooping ability.
Russ Bondurant and Mark Lester were digging Bondurant's brother out of a snowdrift Sunday after his four-wheel-drive truck got stuck at Peter's Creek Road and Melrose Avenue. Lester and Bondurant dug around the front wheels using snowboards - usually reserved for skiing down hills - as shovels.
- JAN VERTEFEUILLE
LENGTH: Long : 220 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. WAYNE DEEL/Staff. The sight of rows of rear-viewby CNBmirrors extending from snow-covered vehicles was a familiar one
Sunday. The day's weather conditions made conventional travel a
relative impossibility. 2. DON PETERSEN/Staff. Above, Alyssa Parenti
makes her way through a drift while enjoying the day on her snow
saucer. 3. At right, Tim Stiess, left, and Chris Henth ski through
downtown Blacksburg en route to a coffeehouse. 4. ERIC BRADY/Staff.
At left, Allen Lazenby and Linda Boitnott find a new way to go
Krogering as they head toward the grocery chain's store at Lakeside
Plaza. At right, Jimmy Hur proves it's never too inclement for cold
brew as he heads back to his house on Kerns Avenue from a nearby
convenience store. color. 5. DON PETERSEN/Staff. Above, Virginia
Department of Transportation snow plow driver Richard Britts clears
snow and ice off his vehicle as he prepares to do the same for
Virginia 419. WAYNE DEEL/Staff. At left, Mark Lester, left, and Russ
Bondurant use snow boards to dig out Bondurant's brother's truck at
the intersection of Peters Creek Road and Melrose Avenue.
NOTE: Above