Snowmageddon
This is NOT a winter wonderland
This time last week I’d just made it back to DC after a short trip back to the UK. My return flight on Sunday was cancelled because of the mega-storm heading towards the east coast of America. I’ve been meaning to write about it all ever since, but as ever, life has got in the way of the things I want to do.
I’d started to get a bit uneasy about the storm not long after landing in England, when a colleague sent over a news story about what was about to hit. Sure enough, on Friday I got an email from BA telling me I wouldn’t be flying back on Sunday after all. That was followed up by a call from a friend back in DC, who informed me he’d bought the last eggs available in the city. People were prepping hard, he told me. Supermarket shelves were bare. You couldn’t get your hands on de-icing kit for love nor money. There were no shovels available in hardware stores.
I sent my husband everything I could find on how to handle the impending disaster. Shovel as it’s snowing, I advised him. Don’t forget we’re responsible for clearing the sidewalk (pavement) in front of our house. Make sure the pipes don’t freeze! Also, there was going to be a massive snowball fight on the Mall on Sunday - he should definitely take the boys.
I’ll be honest, I had major storm FOMO. An exciting thing was happening and I wasn’t there to witness it! I got over that pretty quickly.
I made it back 24 hours after I was supposed to, via Iceland, with a whole load of other grumpy Americans. My husband couldn’t pick me up from the airport, he informed me, because the car was iced in. Snowball fight on the Mall? As if. You couldn’t get out of the neighbourhood. The air when I stepped out into the night from Dulles was face-achingly cold. It was chaos - snow and slush everywhere, a dearth of Uber drivers. Mine had to drop me at the end of our road, which was impassable. I hobbled over the snow, bumping my wheelie case behind me.
Next day, school was cancelled. Then again the next day. My kids were delighted. Plonking them in front of the TV and dialling into meetings was giving me Covid trauma. I went for a rage walk with a friend that evening, stomping and slipping on the ice, where she reminded me that this was when you remember DC is essentially a southern, not a northern city - normally, it snows here and then melts a couple of days later, and the city is simply not set up for this sort of situation. By Tuesday, Mamdani in New York had got all the kids back to school and plowed the streets. DC only owns 20 snow plows, and on the little interactive map where you can see where they were operating, North West DC where we live was completely untouched. Emails went round suggesting neighbours club together to hire private contractors to plow.
On Thursday, school reopened but on a two-hour delay. More dialling into meetings. Same again on Friday. On Saturday, I spent two hours chipping our car out of the ice block that had formed around it. By yesterday, neighbours on our local listserve were grumbling about people holding parking spaces with chairs and outdoor furniture. Sod that - I’d spent 120 minutes chipping away to get my car out, and I’m damned if someone’s going to nick my space.
At this point in time, it’s being referred to as ‘snowcrete’. Which is basically shorthand for solid blocks of ice. The kids can’t even sledge on it any more - it’s too hard. And also too cold. I tried to kick the boys out on Sunday - it was a beautiful blue sky, sunny day - but it was also minus 15. Too cold, they said.
Today I am grateful that schools started at the normal time. Grateful, too, that I don’t live in Virginia, where schools are still closed because all the school bus stops are unreachable, because they’re all piled with snow. Grateful that even though it’s bloody freezing, the sky is blue and it’s beautiful: the Potomac is a sheet of shimmering ice. Slightly worried about the forecast tomorrow, which is showing as more snow. No FOMO this time.