Trying to Make Your Way Back to Austin from D.C.?

The big blizzard ended as expected overnight, but has left behind a huge mess that will take, in some cases, days to fully clean up.  Above is an image showing total snowfall across the northeast into southern New England from this event. Below is the same image, zoomed in on Washington DC at the center:

As feared/expected, as much as 2-3 feet of snow fell across much of the DC area, northwest into western Maryland and northcentral Virginia.  Drifts of snow have buried cars like toys across the region as well.

So, the $64,000 question - "When can I get out of D.C.?!?!?!"  As of this writing, Washington Dulles International Airport says that there are no departing flights scheduled for today, as they'll need the entire day to recover the airport.  You can check the Winter Storm page of their website for later updates.

The same is true for Washington Reagan National Airport, with no departures planned for today.  You can view the airport status on this page.

Snow removal operations at Washington Reagan Airport 1/24/16

If you had flights scheduled out of area airports today, the best bet is to check with your airline on available options as soon as possible.  Remember, the early bird catches the worm, and with hundreds of flights having to be rescheduled, you'll want to be as close to the front of the line as possible to ensure you can get out once regular airport operations resume.

With air travel snarls likely to last into early this week, another option might be to take Amtrak to another city where airport operations will get back to normal faster, but you'll have to wait until at least Monday to use this option out of DC, as Amtrak is not running service there today.  Outside of the DC area, Amtrak is operating on a "limited" schedule today, and should see increased operations on Monday.  Again, you'd want to check with your airline for options in outlying areas first, and then see if Amtrak can help you get there on Monday or Tuesday.  The link to the Amtrak bulletin above pertains to Sunday, 1/24/16 only. For later updates to the Amtrak system status, you can use this link.

So if you're still hunkered down - hang in there - the Lone Star State awaits your arrival as soon as you can get back safely!