Getting walloped with winter weather

Our house at 4:00 Saturday afternoon

This is our first winter back in the U.S., and boy, are we getting a lot of it!

Sure, we are really noticing the winter weather after living near the Equator for a while. Sarah remarked the other day how she appreciates living in a place with distinct seasons again. Also, Geneva did not get any heavy snows (despite what people think, Geneva is not high in the Alps). So we have returned to the type of cold, wet, snowy winters we knew in Chicago.

First there was the pre-Christmas winter storm. They said that big of a storm was rare - only every 50 years or so. We flew out to Seattle the day after that storm, and we were nervous about the airports being open and getting to the Baltimore airport by road to fly out. But we made it to the airport and to our flight with no problems.

Then, this past weekend, an even bigger storm hit the D.C. area. We were walloped! The snow started falling on Friday morning and did not let up until Saturday at 5:00 p.m. There was so much anticipation around this storm - lots of talk and many things shutting down or letting out early. I felt a bit left out with no scheduled events of my own to cancel, since everybody else was canceling their events. The only thing we had scheduled on Saturday was a birthday party of a friend's son out in the suburbs in Virginia, but we didn't need to worry - this was called off on Friday.

With no flight to catch either, we had no obligations outside the house, so we stayed inside all day Saturday, content to let it snow. I went out in the late morning to start shoveling, and by then, there were 19 inches of snow in our back yard (where it had drifted a bit) and 14 inches on the sidewalk in front of our house. Our car was completely buried by that time. I shoveled part of the sidewalk around our house. Yesterday, I could feel the shoveling I did in my lower back.

A measurement taken at 4:00 Saturday afternoon in our front yard

We managed to get out of the house and go to church yesterday morning. Of course, the usual crowd wasn't there. Many members live out in the suburbs. There were only about 30 people there. We knew we could get there on the subway (only two stops away) but that it would take longer that way than usual. So we just started out early. It took us an hour to get to church. The organist could not make it, so I volunteered to accompany the service on the piano, and people really appreciated it.

By the time we got home from church in the early afternoon, the sun was beating down hard through a clear sky and was doing well to melt most of the snow off our car (I had shoveled most of it off earlier). So we finished digging it out, and now it's clear, although we still don't need to go anywhere with it.

As I said, there was a lot of lead-up to this storm. Everybody started talking about it and preparing for it early. We heard that on Thursday morning, 24 hours before the snow started falling, some grocery stories had been emptied out. But perhaps because the storm was bigger than what we thought was the biggest storm in December, the city was still caught off guard. Many streets are still not plowed, the buses are not running, and only the underground stations on the subway are open. So today, Monday, two days after the storm, on the first workday after it, most of the city is shut down. The federal government is closed. D.C. schools are closed. Sarah's office is closed, as is Lexi's daycare. I didn't get official word about my office being closed, but I decided not to go in today (our boss is on vacation this week and next anyway). So it's a snow day for everybody.

We aren't really unhappy or crabby about what's happening, but the only bummer is that while we are all just trying to cope with a huge amount of snow, another snow storm is on its way tomorrow afternoon. It is due to snow for about 24 hours more and leave us with at least 5 more inches! One little complaint I will air now, however: Since late Friday, the signal for our cable TV has not been coming in clearly. This was the ideal weekend for us, stuck inside, to catch up on all of our taped shows, but we haven't been able to watch any TV - live or recorded - since then because of snow on the lines or something probably snow-related. We do have one TV that is not hooked up to cable, so we've been able to stay caught up on the news.

Not to mention the previous weekend and last week: On Saturday of last weekend, it snowed much of the day as well, and we got about 4 inches. And then it snowed again on Tuesday - just a few inches. That last snow was very pretty. This was when I had family from Seattle (and some from NYC over the weekend) visiting. They managed to get out and fly back home before the big storm on early Thursday morning.

So, needless to say, we've had our share of real winter weather this first winter back in the U.S.