What to do when your car slides on ice or floods out

Why Richmond gets both problems

Richmond sits in a climate that swings hard between a real winter and a humid, storm-heavy summer, and both extremes strand vehicles for different reasons. Winter brings Virginia's freeze-thaw cycle: repeated swings above and below freezing rather than one long deep freeze, which glazes untreated secondary roads and pockmarks pavement into potholes by spring. Summer brings thunderstorm season, 35 to 45 thunderstorm days a year statewide, and Richmond's lowest-lying commercial district, Shockoe Bottom, still floods from an ordinary hard downpour, not just a named storm.

The city's chronic ice points

Church Hill's steep, narrow 19th-century streets ice over fast and stay icy since they get little direct sun, a genuinely hilly stretch by Richmond standards. Bon Air, perched on a James River bluff in Chesterfield, has the same problem on its steep grades. Out on SR-288, the overpasses through the rolling Piedmont terrain ice up quickly in a winter storm even when the flatter roads nearby are clear.

The city's chronic flood point: Shockoe Bottom

Shockoe Bottom sits directly beneath the I-95/I-64 downtown overlap, at the confluence of James River and Shockoe Creek flood risk. Its worst modern flood event was Hurricane Gaston on August 30, 2004: 12.60 inches of rain in roughly 8 hours, floodwaters reaching 10 feet deep in the district, 9 deaths regionally, 580 buildings damaged or destroyed, about 20 downtown blocks condemned, and 120 roads closed including portions of I-95. Notably, that flooding came from Shockoe Creek's tributary flooding, not the main James River, even after the 1995 completion of the James River Flood Wall, meaning the flood wall protects against the river but not against the creek and storm-drain system backing up during an intense rain event. That's why any strong summer thunderstorm, not just a tropical system, is still a live flash-flood risk in this exact district.

Never restart a car that stalled in standing water

If your engine died while you were driving through water, do not turn the key again. An engine draws air in through the intake, and if the intake is sitting below the waterline, cranking the starter pulls water into a cylinder instead of air. Water does not compress the way an air-fuel mixture does, so when the piston comes up to compress it, something has to give - usually a bent connecting rod or a cracked engine block. That single extra crank is often the difference between a car that needs a tow and a car that needs a new engine.

Salvage assessment or a normal tow? What decides it

How high the water got is what matters, not how deep it looked from the driver's seat. If water reached the door sills, the floorboards, or higher, treat this as a flood-damage assessment, not a routine breakdown - get the vehicle to a shop or your insurer's preferred facility for inspection before anyone tries to start it, and let them check the engine, transmission fluid, and electrical system before you spend a dollar on repairs. If the water only came up around the tires and the engine never took a breath of it, this is usually a normal stuck-vehicle recovery and tow, nothing more. A vehicle that slid on ice into a curb or ditch should get the same suspension and alignment check before it goes back on the road.

The reference-point ice storm vs. an ordinary cold snap

The region's benchmark event remains the Christmas 1998 ice storm: over an inch of ice across central and southeastern Virginia, roughly 400,000 Virginia customers without power, some out for up to 10 days. More recently, Virginia's governor declared a state of emergency ahead of a forecast ice storm in late January 2026, with Dominion Energy preparing for 1998-scale outages; the worst of that storm track shifted north and Richmond saw only about 5,000 customers without power, but the seriousness of the preparation shows how much weight the region still gives ice-storm risk. Richmond averages 8.8 inches of snow a year, with January and February the snowiest months. Most winters, though, the damage isn't one big storm, it's the freeze-thaw cycle grinding at pavement and batteries week after week into early spring.

Why we flatbed an ice- or flood-affected vehicle

A vehicle that slid on ice or sat in standing water, even briefly, may have compromised brakes, a soaked electrical harness, bent suspension, or damage in places you can't see from outside. We default to flatbed for any ice or flood recovery rather than wheel-lift, so nothing drags, nothing spins, and nothing gets asked of a drivetrain that might already be damaged.