Virginia Beach activates EOC, closes city facilities ahead of forecasted heavy snow

Virginia Beach city officials told the City Council they have activated emergency monitoring and will close city facilities to the public as a winter storm expected to begin Wednesday moves into the area.

Director Tapas Tapasinski of Emergency Management told council the forecast calls for light snow beginning around 11 a.m. Wednesday, with widespread steady snow by 1 p.m. and the heaviest snowfall overnight into Thursday; a second round is possible Thursday morning and through the day. Tapasinski said the city is under a winter storm warning and forecast totals of about 5 to 6 inches are “pretty well likely,” though “we absolutely can't rule out 8 or a little bit more in some spots with drift and snow.”

City Manager Patrick Duhany and Tapasinski said the city has moved to preposition resources to keep critical routes open and to protect public safety. The Emergency Operations Center was placed at a level 1 monitoring status and is expected to move to an in-person level 2 activation Thursday to manage impacts. City offices and facilities will be closed to the public on Wednesday to allow final preparations and expedited snow-clearing actions.

Public Works began pretreating more than 700 miles of primary roadways, including bridges, underpasses and known shaded areas, and will continue pretreatment through the afternoon. The city is preparing about 35 snowplows with salt spreaders to begin clearing when accumulation warrants and has requested 12 additional plows with spreaders from VDOT through the Virginia State EOC. Tapasinski said the state is stretched from recent storms and those supplemental VDOT resources may not be available; the city has disaster/ emergency contracts ready to activate if VDOT cannot supply equipment.

Parks and Recreation Landscape Services is preparing roughly 15–18 snowplow trucks with spreaders plus hand crews and 8–9 additional trucks for critical 24-hour facilities and public schools. Public safety agencies (police, fire, EMS and ECCS) are upping staffing and placing additional four‑wheel‑drive vehicles into service to keep heavy apparatus available for life‑threatening calls.

Public schools announced an asynchronous learning day Wednesday through Friday and will provide bag lunches Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon, with enough meals provided to cover through Friday. Hampton Roads Transit said it will be on modified operations Wednesday afternoon and appears to have canceled some service Thursday.

Tapasinski said officials are discussing whether to request a local emergency declaration that would allow the city to access state resources and to activate certain emergency contracts; the city is under a state declaration currently and is weighing whether to declare locally to seek reimbursement or in‑kind state support. He said a decision on a local declaration will be made later tonight or tomorrow morning and, if declared, the council would be asked to confirm it at the next regularly scheduled meeting (or within the statutorily required period).

“Public Works has been pretreating all 700 plus miles of primary roadways,” Tapasinski said. “We have requested an additional 12 snowplows with salt spreaders from VDOT. That request was made yesterday evening to the Virginia State EOC.”

Council members asked about the forecast confidence and staffing decisions. Tapasinski said the city aggregates short‑range forecasts from the National Weather Service, a contracted firm called Perry Weather and roadway‑specific models (DTN ClearPath) and placed the combined short‑range confidence for a 3–6 inch event at roughly 80–90 percent. He reiterated the city’s operating posture and emphasized efforts to keep priority routes and 24‑hour facilities accessible.

Officials said they will monitor the storm through Friday and update the council if additional resource requests are required.

Ending: The briefing closed after council questions; staff said they will decide on a local emergency declaration after confirming resource needs and will update council and the public as conditions and resource decisions evolve.