• The Knickerbocker Snow of January 27-29, 1922
  The biggest of all at 28 inches. It collapsed the roof of Crandall's Knickerbocker Theater in DC, with terrible loss of life.

• The President's Day Snow of 1979, February 18-19, 1979
  We got 18.7 inches that time. One Barcrofter who had come in more than a little under the weather the night before called the police that morning and reported his car had been stolen. The police thought that was highly improbable, and persuaded him to go out and check, whereupon he found his car in a snowbank where he had been unable to get it into his driveway the night before. (As we said, he was more than a little under the weather.)

• The Blizzard of 1983, February 11, 1983.
  A biggie at 16.6 inches.

• The Blizzard of 1996.
  Initially about 16 inches in Barcroft, increasing to 24 inches (officially 23.8 at National Airport) with much bigger drifts in some places. Barcroft School was closed for a week. Under the circumstances the County did a nice job of keeping our streets at least marginally passable. Barcrofters helped neighbors who needed help to shovel out, held block potlucks, skied in the streets and on the W&OD trail, 4-wheeled mothers delivering babies to the hospital, shoveled incessantly, nursed sore backs and generally developed cabin fever.

Here are two photos of Eighth Road South looking east from Buchanan toward Wakefield.

The photo on the left is of the Knickerbocker snow, taken in 1922 by Mildred Handy. The one on the right was taken on January 10, 1996, by Randy Swart.

This page was revised on: July 29, 2006.