few ado about a bunch of snow

the snow came eventually between friday and saturday night (february 5 to 6th). around 19 inches/50cm accumulated. it kept snowing on saturday and sunday a dazzling white world with sunshine greeted us in the morning.

then the snow stayed.















on 14th street, otherwise a medium-sized road serviced by buses, the white mass piled up. can you tell the lanes?
















since then almost four days have gone by and nothing has been done about it visibly by the city. smaller plough trucks showed up from time to time -- with their ploughs lifted in the air. no salt was distributed anymore; no other measures to clear or organize the situation were undertaken. federal offices just decided to shut down on friday afternoon. since then that has not changed. a bakery we tried was out of everything, a grocery store badly picked over, and we bought one of the last shovels in a k-mart northeast of the dc.














cars remained snowed in for the most part during saturday. over the weekend people dug themselves paths on side walks in front of their houses. but until sunday a lot of people still walked on the road.














meridian hill park turned into a sledding hill and its waterfall stayed silent. it's probably not very often you can stand in the midst of it. walking was a pain, however. it took twice as long to navigate along the streets, to dance over uncleared ice hunks, and to avoid the few cars that approached almost silently on the white layer.














other parts of the city such as buzzing georgetown had streets that felt like driving over pot-holed dirt roads in a third world country. still, taking the car has been so far the fastest way to get around. up until monday no buses ran, the metro was in disarray with no above ground service and poor performance underground. when we tried to take the train on sunday we waited for 39 minutes until an announcement blinked to say that the train is schedule to arrive in another 15 minutes. by then we decided to brave the streets and sidewalks again by foot.



















at least some beauty seemed to come out of the situation.

but as one german responded to my description of snowed-in dc: what a confession of failure for the capital of what claims to the be the world super power.


ps: another 10 inches/25cm are supposed to fall over night and tomorrow (wednesday). snowcapolypse continues.