Washington DC Parking Enforcement Found Big Profit In Blizzard

Parking was a challenge in Washington DC
after last week's blizzard. But the city made
a killing in parking and towing fines.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Something like two feet of snow fell in and around Washington DC last weekend.

As you can imagine, it was probably hard to dig cars out of snow clogged, congested streets.

Or, if your car was freed from the snow, good luck finding a place to park, since all the parking spots had been converted to giant mountains of snow. 

Washington DC's parking enforcers saw this as a golden opportunity.

Last week, after the blizzard, the District issued around $1.5 million worth of parking tickets, says the Weather Channel, via NBC Washington.

The city also issued $65,500 in fined snd towed more than 650 vehicles.

Requirements in the city are that cars must be parked fewer than 12 inches from the curb. That's hard to do when there's a four foot wide snowbank in front of the curb.

Of course, Washington did need to keep roads passable, and cars parked too close to the middle of the road due to the snowbanks would block the roads, so in that sense, I can see the parking fines.

The city focused their ticketing on snow removal emergency routes.

A few people caught a break, says NBC 4 in Washington

The mayor voided snow emergency parking tickets issued last Friday as the blizzard was beginning because some people might not have learned of the parking restrictions, or were still running errands to prepare for the storm.

But to add insult to injury, if your car was impounded in Washington DC, bring a shovel to the impound lot. It was snowed in, too, and people had to dig their cars out to retrieve them.