Virginia Winter Storm Leaves Hundreds Stranded
By Paul Homewood
Joe Biden wants everyone to drive electric cars. How many of them would be dead now if they had been stuck in this jam?
The Virginia Department of Transportation is warning drivers to stay away from Interstate 95 Tuesday morning so crews can free up hundreds of drivers who remain stranded or in slow-moving traffic in temperatures well-below freezing, in what officials are describing as an "unprecedented" event.
The situation currently unfolding in Northern Virginia comes after a winter storm dumped up to a foot of snow and toppled trees across the Fredericksburg region Monday. As of right now, Interstate-95 remains closed northbound and southbound between Exits 104 and 152 leading up to the Washington, D.C., metro area and there are reports of drivers being trapped on the icy roads for at least 19 hours, such as Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.
"We know many travelers have been stuck on Interstate 95 in our region for extraordinary periods of time over the past 24 hours, in some cases since Monday morning. This is unprecedented, and we continue to steadily move stopped trucks to make progress toward restoring lanes," Marcie Parker, an engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Fredericksburg district, said in a statement.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/virginia-i-95-winter-storm-traffic-jam-latest-updates
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It would serve the drivers of e-cars right if they got stranded. They would be mad to drive when bad weather is forecast.
👍👍
If they survive it is probable they would continue their belief in e-cars and blame Global Warming. No commonsense, no rational thinking.
There will have been cautious people like me who, for long journeys or in winter, either leaves home with a full tank or never goes less than half full. Once bitten twice shy as they say. So if some others caught in this situation runs out of fuel it wouldn’t be beyond man’s ingenuity to get some fuel from an full tank to an empty one. It would be impossible to get electrons from one battery to another.
There is an article in the Washington Post on this situation, stating BEVs are inferior to ICE cars in these circumstances. The comments are amazing, just about everyone defends the BEVs as superior in these circumstances (heated seats so low battery usage, no idling) and they are saving the planet as well. It seems there are more green loonies in the USA than here. I commented on a mass evacuation situation such as Hurricane or Forest Fire.
Heres the article, but it is behind a pay wall, (switch off Java Script and you might see it)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/04/imagine-virginias-icy-traffic-catastrophe-with-only-electric-vehicles/
GeoffB: You make a very valid point about mass evacuations.
A few EVs caught in a winter jam like this might run low on juice and have to be rescued in some way – probably by sharing other folks’ cars. trucks, etc.. The same would happen to any ICE car that was low on fuel. It’s more down to the drivers’ behaviour than to the nature of their vehicles.
However a mass evacuation is a different scale of problem and highlights the potential problem of trying to get masses of EVs charged – or recharged en route – at short notice.
Ironically Tesla scored some PR brownie points some years ago. It was during a pre-hurricane evacuation in Florida (iirc) and Tesla used an over-the-air upgrade to temporarily extend the range of some cars, highlighting the range/refuelling issue.
“Politics Ruins Everything”
It’s because most politicians and politically approved figureheads have studied Law, Politics, the Humanities, History, Art, or even the History of Art, and not a physical Science or Engineering. It has created a critical mass of ignorance where strategic wisdom should reside, where wisdom cannot penetrate: and they call that success, success for their isolated tribe, the Generalists.
They try and direct technological projects with little understanding. Instead of grappling with the inherent problems that Engineers are used to grappling with, and often solved by someone asking a ‘stupid question’, they spend their ‘managerial time’ on the projects attempting to understand the basics while we incorrectly assume that pointing out a fundamental mistake will be enough for the correct course to be taken.
If only!
If only they knew what was meant by a project plan, and why it is needed, and acknowledged as useful, for a project to succeed! Somewhere, on the Overall Plan, there would be an item, labeled ‘Extra reliable electricity generating capacity’.
They can’t even do politics properly.
My late father graduated as a Civil Engineer in Structures and Hydraulics, ready to build bridges and lay out water supply for a town. After 30 years he told me the only Structures he had designed was a shadehouse for my mother, and the only Hydraulics he ever used was that “water ran downhill”. The latter came up at least once a year, often being disputed.
“This is unprecedented, . . ”
Oh, BS!
Maybe for her and that stretch of road. Besides, the Weather Service warned of this storm way ahead.
I was in Cincinnati OH in the spring of 1966 (maybe ’67) when the same sort of thing happened. Areas on the southern fringe of regular winter weather are less prepared for big snow events. Do they buy millions of dollars of snow removal equipment and then have it sit idle for 15 years? That’s not smart.
People should have stayed home.
One of the alleged benefits [sic] of going all-electric on private cars is supposed to be to help make the weather cooler.
Re ‘unprecedented’ – it won’t be next time.
It is always “unprecedented”. A nice, emotionally charged word.
“Unprecedented” is currently the favourite word of the BBC. It is repeatedly used in all its propaganda messages.
I suspect Joe Biden will soon be unpresidented and leave what I now call the Green House.
I myself would buy an EV, but only at gunpoint!
Virginia didn’t pre-treat the road. Virginia has snow plow trucks.
I.e., Virginia had the tools and the know how to prevent it, just chose not to do anything. Perhaps that’s where the ‘unprecedented’ comes from. The storm certainly wasn’t.
Read this link to see how a Tesla owner experienced the storm.
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-truck-driver-stranded-over-12-hours-on-virginia-highway-1.5727428
I was 6 when my family and I were stuck in the 1950 Thanksgiving storm in Ohio on our way back to Morgantown, WV after spending Thanksgiving with friends in Michigan. All came to a halt on the 2 lane roads through Ohio that Sunday. Although we had blankets, food, warm clothes and tire chains, those in Ohio had none of this. Local farmers got people out of their cars and we spent the night w/ ca. 20 people on a farmhouse floor. The next day we found that if we had chains we could get to Akron and did to spend the night in a motel. There we found that the PA Turnpike was still closed w/ no traffic being allowed off. We could get to Pittsburgh and on to Uniontown, PA. We then made our way to Morgantown, but could not get up our long driveway though the 3′ of snow. My older brothers and daddy (they had done all of the driving) shoveled out a neighbor’s driveway to put our car in it and we 5 mushed up to the house. That was the ONLY time in my public school history, including WVU, that school was closed.