Erin Miller

We are emerging from our second once-in-a-lifetime blizzard in DC this year. Obama dubbed the storm snowmageddon, though snowpocalypse2, after the snowpocalypse1 storm on December 19, and snowtorious B.I.G. remain popular. Officially 17.8″ fell at National Airport, the fourth largest snowfall since the National Weather Service began keeping records, but 26″ fell in the district. It stopped snowing in the early evening yesterday and the sun is out today. People are approaching their cars on the side of the roads, shovels in hand, but usually start laughing out loud at the enormity of the task before they even get their first scoop of snow into their shovel. Once they have the snow in the shovel, they look around and laugh again, because there is absolutely no where to put it.

Other than being completely snowed in, life in the district has continued fairly normally. We never lost power (though more than 100,000 people in the area have) and the metro continued serving the underground stations (which includes ours), though trains were only running every 30 minutes and they stopped service early last night. Despite its unofficial motto, (“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,”) the Postal Service was not able to make its rounds Saturday, for the first time in 30 years. Streets were practically devoid of cars for more than 24 hours and there was something surreal about being able to frolic down the middle of the streets, Spot running free. Spot is in her dog bed snoring after spending so much time playing in the snow yesterday. The Mayor says that he is trying to have the city ready for business by Monday morning, but where the snow is cleared from the sidewalks, it comes up past my knees and past Spot’s head, so we’ll see.