RICHMOND, Va. — Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) urged Virginians to stay at home and off the roads Wednesday as a major winter storm moved across the Commonwealth. The storm is forecasted to bring up to half a foot of snow to Central Virginia with even higher totals to the south and east of Richmond.
"We are still under a State of Emergency. I cannot be more clear. We declared this 10 days ago, but I need everybody to understand that the State of Emergency continues. And if there wasn't one that had already been declared, I would be declaring one today," Youngkin said as he shared updates on how Virginia was preparing for the winter storm. "If you are not where you want to be by midnight tonight, don't go. Stay at home and make sure that you have good provisions. But I do not want anyone on the roads after midnight tonight. We have to have clear roads across the state so that all of our great VDOT personnel and everyone helping them can do the work of getting cleaned up after the snowstorm."
The governor paid particular attention to Southwest Virginia, parts of which are still recovering from last week's winter storm, which knocked out power to thousands of Virginians and closed hundreds of roads.
"We're expecting a varied degree of snow across the state. There are lots of regions, like Northern Virginia, which are going to be on the lower end, at least, based on today's forecast. And let's call that one to two inches, and then we have really heavy snow expected, sadly, again in Buchanan County and Dickinson County, anywhere from six to 12 inches," he said. "This will be a 24-hour snow event. There may be breaks along the way, but heavy snow for 24 hours."
The governor also addressed how Virginia is positioning snowplows, police, and other emergency vehicles based on the forecast.
"We had lots of assets that have been deployed into the Southwest for both flood and ice issues. We are leaving most of those assets there because of the snow and the continued effort to clean up after the floods, but we are deploying other assets," he said. "That includes all of our road treatment equipment, all of the plowing capabilities and accident clearing capabilities. State police, again, are now surging into their full manning across the state and the National Guard is deployed, and we will have National Guard troops with capability deployed, yes, remaining in Southwest Virginia, but now moving, yes, to Lynchburg, in case we have problems on I-81 and the valley corridor, but predominantly Richmond, Fredericksburg, and down into Hampton Roads. We are moving resources onto the Eastern Shore because they don't have that many resources to make sure that the Eastern Shore is taken care of, because again, six to 12 inches of snow in this part of Virginia is a lot."
This is a developing story. Email the CBS 6 Newsroom if you have additional information to share.
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