DC Snowpocalypse: City’s 2009 record-setting snowstorm in photos

WASHINGTON - Flashback…14 years ago…the entire D.C. region is covered in more than a foot of snow!

It was the blizzard of December 18-19, 2009. Known locally as Snowpocalypse, it would go down as the largest December snowstorm in the recorded weather history of the nation’s capital. We didn’t know it at the time, but it was the first of three blizzards that would make the winter of 2009-2010 D.C.’s snowiest on record.

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The snow started to fall in the D.C. area that Friday night around 7:30 p.m. and continued all the way through 11 p.m. on Saturday.

No one in the metro area escaped the snow. The lowest snow total for the storm was from between eight and 10 inches in St. Mary’s County. Everywhere else in the forecast area received at least 14 inches of snow.

Tourists walk along the National Mall at the base of the Washington Monument December 19, 2009 in Washington, DC. Heavy snowfall has blanketed portions of the east coast with the Washington, DC area expecting up to two feet of snow. (Photo by Win McN

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"Snowball in hand, the President chases Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on the White House colonnade. To escape, Rahm ran through the Rose Garden, which unfortunately for him, was knee-deep in snow." (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

By the time the flakes stopped falling, the total snowfall at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport was 16.4 inches. In Maryland, 18 inches were recorded at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. In Virginia, Dulles International Airport also recorded 18 inches. For all three major airports this was the largest single December snowfall in history.

On Christmas Day, less than a week later, seven inches of snow remained on the ground - tying it with 1966 for most snow on record on the ground on Christmas Day.

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Scenes from around the D.C. region from the blizzard of December 18-19, 2009

The total 16.6 inches of snow D.C. saw in December 2009 was more than the winters of 2007 and 2008 combined. On average, D.C. gets around 13 inches of snowfall a year.

January 2010 followed with 7.4 inches of snow. One of the region’s biggest snowstorms in history came on February 5-6. That storm, which came to be known as Snowmageddon, dropped 17.8 inches on the city. Less than a week later, the season third blizzard would push us into the record books.