The city saw a sudden winter chill this week, as light snow covered the streets, bringing a pause to the usual rush hour bustle. With office buildings and schools closing, city parks became gathering spots for children and parents hoping to take advantage of prime snowman-building weather. Wednesday morning’s below-freezing temperatures, followed by a powdery snow, arrived several hours ahead of schedule and lingered well into the evening.

Darren Guffey, dermatologist and father of two, enjoyed sledding with his kids in Byrd Park after they had completed their online learning. However, after several days off due to extreme cold, snow, and a water crisis, it starts to feel as though the kids have been home more than at school, he said.

“It’s a little tough when you have to cancel and reschedule a bunch of patients. My wife and I are both patient or client facing, so it gets a little tough when you have to have one person on kid duty unexpectedly,” Guffey said.

Early estimates predicted the city would face anywhere from 8 to 14 inches of snow. But within Byrd Park, he noticed a “very typical” amount of snow for Virginia.

“How we’re not better at nailing it in the year 2025 is a little beyond me, but I guess the storm can shift a little bit one way or another,” Guffey said.

 A runner makes their way through Byrd Park on Wednesday, Feb. 19.
 

Higher expectations for snowfall may be due to a lack of standardization and human intervention across weather apps, according to Sean Sublette, a meteorologist and contributor to WRIR and The Richmonder. There are several data sets used to predict the weather, and it is often unclear which dataset a weather app uses to make its predictions, he said.

“Some of them pull raw model data, some pull digitized data that has a tiny bit of human oversight, some have a little more oversight than others, but there’s no one forecast out there for everybody,” Sublette said. “Anybody can pull anything from a dataset that they want when they put these out there.”

While weather predictions are generally more accurate a day or two in advance, Sublette also has that due to word of mouth, people tend to remember the first number they hear, he said.

“Anybody who’s been on social media has seen people plot up maps that are 12, 14 days in advance saying ‘we’re going to get a foot and a half of snow in a week and a half!’ and they almost never come to fruition,” Sublette said. “It’s quite common, but once we get into the last one or two days before a storm hits, the data is a little bit better. We’re able to sample the atmosphere better one or two days ahead of time.”

Last week, Gov. Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency in Virginia ahead of an impending winter storm. In a press conference on Tuesday, he reiterated these concerns, and urged Virginians to stay home and avoid roads as they are able.

Between midnight and 11 p.m., there were 481 car crashes across the state, with 44 injuries and zero fatalities, according to Virginia State Police. Within Central Virginia, there have been 25 crashes with three reported injuries as of press time.