How much snow do you get in Charlottesville?

Most of my clients moving to Charlottesville ask this question.

Every snow in Charlottesville is not a/the Snowpocalypse. Also, weather folks in Charlottesville are pretty awesome.

Many years ago I was meeting with some new potential buyer clients who were new to Charlottesville. There was a supposed storm coming in that weekend and they asked whether they should leave early as they needed to be home for some event.

The media were freaking out*, donning the special jackets, new weather graphics packages, people were stocking up on water, sterno, bread, milk, and other implements of survival.

I told them they needn’t worry as we never get snow substantiated by the outcry. It barely snowed. But we got a lot of ice, they were stuck in Charlottesville and they didn’t move to Charlottesville.

My answers to “How much snow do you get in Charlottesville?” –

• A few times a year, with school shutting down several times, and hopefully at least one of those snows will be fun.
• Enough to cause chaos – across the board.
• Not enough to reasonably cause chaos.
• Not enough. I love snow, and love how it quiets things down, albeit briefly.
• Enough to close schools in Albemarle County, usually the City of Charlottesville, and most often the surrounding counties.
  • • Keep in mind that Albemarle County is huuge  – 726 square miles huge with lots of rural roads, many of which have tree cover, which takes days and weeks to melt.
• Driving in snow and ice is easy. Drive slowly, don’t suddenly hit the brakes or accelerator
• The media were awesome in 2009’s snowpocalypse.

As with many of the stories I write here, I turned to social media first. The answers were … varied. By perspective.

Thanks to all for the responses, which range from “it depends” to “too much” to “not enough.”

Dammit. Below were twitter responses that I’d aggregated on a service called Storify. It’s gone.