State of Emergency in Virginia Closes Reagan Airport Runways

by Amy Judd | December 19, 2009 at 02:20 pm

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The state of emergency declared earlier in Virginia has now closed all runways at Reagan National Airport (DCA) until 6am Sunday December 20th and all metro rails around the city have been suspended.

“We are going to throw everything we have at it to keep the District open for business on this busy pre-holiday weekend,” Mayor Fenty said when he announced the snow emergency.

“We urge everyone, if you don’t have to go anywhere, wait. This snow should end early [Sunday] morning with a 24-hour cleanup. We should have a lot of streets ready to go by rush hour Monday. And, hopefully, all of it done between Monday and Wednesday.”

Even though the metro was running de-icing trains all last night, they are fast approaching the point where the trains run the risk of getting stranded on snow covered tracks. Above ground operations were ceased at 1pm.

Other airports across the country are also experiencing delays due to the storm covering the eastern seaboard. It is advised that if you are traveling by air today or tomorrow that you contact your airline first to make sure your flight is still scheduled before leaving for the airport.