State Highway Administrator Neil J. Pedersen just left the agency's operations center in Hanover to assess the region's rapidly deteriorating road conditions. If they are bad enough, he said, Gov. Martin O'Malley could issue an order banning driving on the state's roads until the snow emergency eases.

Pedersen said the last time such a ban was issued was during the President's Day snowstorm of 2003.

O'Malley is expected back at the operations center within a few hours. He'll be driving back from Camp Fretterd in Reisterstown so presumably he'll have a pretty good notion of his own whether a ban is warranted.

Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, there are road closings cropping up around the state, including on Route 100 at Magothy Bridge Road, where a crash closed all eastbound and northbound lanes. Snow alone was reason enough to close part of  Interstate 68 in Allegany County.