<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by HollyHP:
The pilot announced that visual inspection showed all the snow had blown off, so no de-icing was necessary.</font>
I sincerely hope he didn't actually say that, or if he did it was as a joke. The last pilot who made a similar comment wound up flying his Air Florida 737 into the Potomac River.
Ice and snow are very different things, and a visual inspection of snow having blown off does not address the issue of ice buildup on control surfaces, especially in a high-wing aircraft like the ARJ-85 where a visual inspection is not particularly easy to conduct.