Another Cold One

The view outside my front door last night.

Polar Vortex part two. Well not exactly. There was some snow. Lots and lots and lots of cancellations even before a flake fell. The reason was not to repeat a huge disaster from a few years ago.

Similar circumstances. Snow was supposed to hit the area but not start until mid to late morning. Most everything was open most importantly the federal government. Then as the weather got worse schools started closing early. Then the federal government closed and traffic hell broke out. It took people hours upon hours to get home. A commute of an hour turned into a six hour commute. The reason was a snow crews were gearing up to plow the roads there were all sorts of people on the roads due to the early closings. Disaster to say the least.

This time around schools, the federal and district governments just closed for the day. I went to work. Not a bad commute at all. In fact it went really well because so many people were at home. Getting back home I had no problems. I left work around 1. No problems walking to the subway and not problems walking from the subway to home. In fact I think I could have stayed another hour and still gotten home easily.

Around my house the roads had some snow on them but there were spots where it still hadn’t stuck. Finally around 3 things started to pile up. I went out around 5:30 and cleared off my car and shoveled the walk. The TV weather people had said that by 7 most of the snow should stop. I looked out around 9 and the snow was still coming down. Finally around 10 it stopped. I went out and shoveled again. I figured it was going to be warmer out at that time then it was supposed to be for all of Wednesday. Better to get it done and out of the way. I also had decided to get into work early so I didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn and shovel.

Turns out to have been a very good idea. Very little snow fell after I shoveled. And it was cold and windy. It’s nice when things work out the way you planned them.

This morning the sidewalks were not bad walking to the Metro. It was cold but the wind was not bad. Well it wasn’t bad until I was waiting for a train on the Rhode Island Avenue platform. The platform is about 30 feet above the ground and when the wind comes up there’s very little to block it. There were delays because of some sort of an electrical problem at one station. Another station had to off load a train due to some problem with it. So there were delays in both directions. Finally along came a train and I hoped on. I warmed up pretty quickly except for my feet.

There’s supposed to be a few more days of below freezing temperatures which means what snow we have won’t melt all that fast. What does melt from the sun will re-freeze at night so the next couple of days may be a little difficult.

The view outside my office window this morning.