We were Fine in the Blizzard of '09

The DC area is digging out. Roads are clear, pretty much. But on my way down 270 today, the sign says: Right two lanes closed for removal of snow. Think about it. The snow fell Friday. Now it's Tuesday and there is still a massive amount of snow to be removed: enough to close two lanes of traffic on a very busy highway. Enough to bring out the bulldozers -- the big ones. Traffic is crawling from Bethesda past Shady Grove - and that's a far piece.

Here is the blizzard as it happened.

We’ve been hearing about it all week: it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming.

Friday: To the grocery store. The tv cameras are already there. This is going to be big news. We can forget about the health care reform battle for a moment.

Every single cart is gone. No—here’s one. Inside people (mostly men) are standing in front of the shelves with cell phones jammed next to their ears. “You want what?” and
“It’s where?”

A young couple is carrying only a basket. There is no way they can fit what they will need in just a basket -- no cart. Optimists.

My mother told me: NEVER go to the grocery store without a list. I could no more leave without a list than go to the store in bare feet. I feel smug as I zip past those people blocking the cereal aisle, staring off into space, muttering.

Friday afternoon: It’s snowing - tiny white flakes. It's a distinctively non-Southern snow, dry, not wet, frozen, not half melted. This stuff is going to be here a while. Where on earth is the newspaper? Maybe we'll find it in the spring.

My neighbor struggles up her driveway, a paint can in each hand. “Everyone else is standing in line to buy milk, and you're buying paint?" I say.
She shrugs. "I'm going to be stuck inside anyway."

The forecast is for twenty-five inches. I don't believe it. But it's still coming down.

Saturday morning: Ida Jane orders me to open the door: she wants out. The snow is piled so deep she sinks to her stomach. She looks at me as if to say, "Can't you do something about this?"

My neighbor who moved to DC from Boston gets to use his snow blower for the first time in five years. Bless his heart, he blows snow off everyone’s sidewalks.

People are hard at work, shoveling snow, but the people down the street believe in having a good time. They glide by on cross country skis. He says he hasn't had these skis out in five years! "There is a left pole and a right pole,” he says, “but I’ve forgotten which is which. Oh well.”

So much snow – we can’t go anywhere, so we don’t have to feel guilty for NOT going anywhere.

It was a lovely weekend; now we are digging out. I wouldn't have believed there was this much snow in the whole world.