Montgomery County leaders review storm response after prolonged snow and data failures

Montgomery County officials gave the County Council a detailed briefing on Feb. 3 about the response to the late‑January/early‑February 2026 winter storm, describing large operational efforts and significant technology and communication failures.

Rich Maddalino, the county's chief administrative officer, opened the briefing by thanking employees and contractors and promising an after‑action report. "We will be doing an after action report as we always do about this storm," Maddalino said, adding an apology "to all of our residents who felt let down, misinformed, by what happened during the storm."

Matt Mazurko, an emergency management specialist and the briefing's lead meteorologist, said the event combined cold air, lift and moisture in a pattern that produced a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain. He summarized measured precipitation as "about 6 to 10 inches of snow across the county" in mixed form and said that if the event had been all snow it would have been far more extreme regionally.

Department of Transportation staff described an extended operation that deployed about 500 pieces of road equipment, 126 sidewalk units, roughly 220 plow routes and about 600 personnel (roughly half county staff and half contractors). DOT said crews cleared approximately 100 miles of sidewalks and more than 800 bus stops while handling more than 10,000 3‑1‑1 service requests.

But DOT officials said an automated data feed from SnowIQ led to false reports that routes were complete. The automated transfer of status from SnowIQ into public‑facing systems and into 3‑1‑1 produced incorrect "completed" flags that made residents and dispatchers think work was finished when it was not. "The data quality going into our snow management system, SnowIQ, was not sufficient to guide our operational response," a DOT presenter said, and the county took the tracker down when staff concluded it was doing more harm than good.

The SnowIQ/3‑1‑1 issue contributed to another source of frustration: premature opening of the 3‑1‑1 service‑request channel and closure of tickets without clear explanations. DOT staff described a backlog of duplicative and conflicting service requests and said there are about 15 separate input streams for complaints and requests that complicate triage and prioritization.

School officials described their operations and how they interacted with DOT. Adnan Mahmoon, MCPS chief of operations, said the district began on‑the‑ground operations at 6 a.m. Sunday, housed staff in nearby hotels to maintain crews, and relied heavily on contractors to clear more than 90 school sites. "We served a north of 47,000 meals throughout last week," Mahmoon said, while noting the count was not yet final. MCPS officials said they delivered a prioritized list of problem locations to DOT at 2:13 p.m. Sunday and then supplied additional items each day as conditions evolved.

Council members pressed department leaders on several recurring themes: when MCPS formally requested county help; whether the county has a clear protocol for school‑related priorities; how bus stops and walking routes to school should be identified and prioritized; and whether contracts and contractor billing were coordinated across agencies. Several council members urged the creation of a written memorandum of understanding (MOU) between DOT and MCPS to remove ambiguity around roles and communications.

Council members also raised equity concerns, asking how the county will ensure vulnerable residents — including seniors and people with disabilities — have accessible routes during severe storms. Several members urged the after‑action report to examine how to prioritize sidewalks and bus stops that serve school neighborhoods and transit‑dependent residents.

Montgomery Parks officials described a scaled, prioritized response focused on parkways, parking areas that serve critical facilities and sidewalks that connect to schools. The Parks director identified a designated snow commander and said parks provided limited truck support to DOT in exchange for salt and deicing supplies.

Departments repeatedly described the event as "close to" but not requiring extraordinary state resources such as the National Guard; they said most county resources were committed and that expanding response levels to fully clear all sidewalks and every bus stop in the short time the public demanded would require substantially more equipment and staff.

What comes next: county leadership promised an after‑action report that will catalog technology failures, data‑feed problems, procurement and contractor arrangements, prioritization rules, and communication practices. Several council members also asked that the county resurface any past after‑action reports from 2016 and consider a formal MOU with MCPS to set expectations for future storms.

The briefing and follow‑up Q&A left the council with a list of specific fixes to study, including: correcting SnowIQ data flows and inserting human verification before public updates; cleaning up DOT road inventory; improving integration between SnowIQ and 3‑1‑1; codifying interagency communication protocols; and evaluating equipment and contractor capacity for higher‑magnitude events.