Snow in DC

Last Wednesday it started to snow about 2 p.m.   All government offices closed two hours early so that employees could get home before the storm got going.  I have a lot of work to do and was going to stay late, hoping to get caught up a little, but my supervisor insisted that I go home.  By the time I got on the Metro it was about 3:30 p.m. and was snowing very hard.  The snow in DC is very wet and heavy.  Because I don't have to drive, I was not very concerned.

When I got home, I had no electricity.  I found a candle, had cold cereal and milk for supper.  Then I crawled into bed with an extra blanket, flashlight, and a good book.  Sometime in the night the electricity came back on.  Several thousand others were not so lucky.

Because there was no electricity, the traffic lights in front of my house were not working.  All of the people in downtown DC were trying to get home before the storm really hit.  Think about a few hundred thousand cars all trying to leave the city, add heavy snowfall, no traffic lights, and a few accidents and you have a major traffic jam.  Stories are that many cars were stuck on the beltway four to seven hours.  Boy am I glad I ride the Metro and don't have to drive to get to work each day.

The next day I went to work as usual.  I was the only person on my floor.  A few others drifted in later, but mostly the office was empty.  Schools were all closed.  The funny thing is, all of this chaos and it only snowed a few inches.  It does not take much to shut down a city when you have so many people living in one place.