Heavy Snow in Delaware, February 18, 2000

Snow spread across Delaware between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. EST on Friday, February 18th. It changed briefly to sleet and freezing rain before changing to plain rain by noon EST. The change to plain rain occurred rather quickly in Sussex County, but took until about noon EST along the Pennsylvania border in New Castle County. Accumulations prior to the changeover in New Castle and Kent Counties averaged between 2.5 and 3 inches. Three inches of snow accumulated within both Dover and Wilmington. At the New Castle County Airport, 2.5 inches of snow accumulated. Farther south accumulations, if any, were generally an inch or less. The snow led to numerous accidents. In Georgetown, a 27-year-old man was killed early Friday morning when his vehicle slid into the path of an oncoming vehicle. In New Castle County, a woman was seriously injured after her car slammed into the back of a plow on Interstate 495. The road was closed for one hour. An Appoquinimink (New Castle County) School District bus carrying twenty-four students slid into a utility pole. Six students suffered bumps and bruises. Over two dozen fender benders occurred in New Castle County. In Brandywine Hundred (New Castle County), a man rescued his 3-year-old son from an abandoned well that had been cracked open by a plow during the afternoon of the 18th. The cause of the snow was a pair of low pressure systems that developed in the Southern Plains during the day on the 17th. By Friday morning the 18th, one low was in the central Ohio Valley, the other near Springfield, Missouri. A large high pressure system moved across the northern Middle Atlantic States and New England on the 17th and 18th and supplied a fresh supply of cold air. But the lows' storm track passed them through Delaware during the night of the 18th and the morning of the 19th. The proximity of these lows and the counterclockwise circulations around them from the nearby Atlantic were enough to raise temperatures above the freezing mark.