02/17/2003 11:59:03
I stole pieces from an article published in the Washington Post this morning
"The Washington area reveled in a day of unending
snow globe enchantment,
flakes falling hard and heavy from the early hours of the morning to deep
into the night yesterday,
transforming major roads into quiet cul-de-sacs and cul-de-sacs into
polar landscapes under as much as two feet of snow.
A blizzard that could be considered epic by
mid-Atlantic standards inspired
such fantastic sights as snowboarding in Falls Church,
cross-country skiing on Capitol Hill and tractor-sledding in Southern
Maryland.
On the White House lawn, President Bush's terrier and spaniel
dogpaddled
happily through snow that rose as high as their snouts.
The region's biggest storm in decades also may have
been its most beautifully timed.
The snow smothered a week's worth of jitters about war and
terrorist-inspired Code Orange alerts.
And by arriving in the middle of a three-day weekend,
it spared residents the usual grief of school closings and snarled
traffic.
"It's a winter wonderland adventure.
If you have nowhere to go, it's fun to be out in it," said Bill
Ramsey,
as he leisurely shoveled his Leesburg driveway and looked forward to a
cocooning kind of night,
with popcorn and Chardonnay in front of the TV.
"But if it's not cleared up by [tomorrow]," he added, "it'll be a different story."
It was the kind of snow that had to be seen for
itself.
A sort of premature cabin fever seemed to have seized the region by midday
as families,
some with cameras, wandered the streets to gawk at
drifts deep enough to cover a kindergartner or camouflage a sports car.
Entire neighborhoods were reborn as Ansel Adams-like
tableaux of black and white,
eerily silent, with groves of trees bowed earthward under a thick
topping of meringue.
Sidewalks disappeared, sending pedestrians into the streets.
But as the snow kept tumbling in stinging wet
gusts,
many found that they preferred to experience it from a warm and cozy
remove.
The few restaurants and coffee shops that opened yesterday
were filled with patrons who lingered over French toast or hot
chocolate
to gaze out the window at the powdery barrage.
Back outside, the region's snow shovelers labored
honorably
but were outmatched as the tempest kept filling their freshly cleaned steps
and driveways.
On Capitol Hill, city-run plows rumbled every hour or so along main
arteries,
trailed here and there by a hard-core jogger in dogged pursuit of clear
pavement.
The side streets, meanwhile, fell farther and farther under the rippling
drifts."
I hope you enjoyed the pictures...:)