Snowcrete

This winter brought one of our more unusual snowstorms in DC – the Snowcrete. Temperatures were well below freezing when the storm started with about 5" of snow falling and sticking immediately to the ground. Then a warm layer of air aloft moved in with surface temperatures still in the low 20s and we got another 5" of sleet that was topped off with some freezing rain. This left us with a thick layer of 'snowcrete' that was brutal to remove. I got an early start clearing the sidewalk out front in the snow phase of the storm but my snow shovel broke, so needed to share our neighbors Matt & Larry's shovel. We kept a narrow path clear, but the battle was lost in back. 

I also had to make the call to cancel our FMW/DCM dialogue on Sunday the 25th, and decide what to do about my flight to Richland on Monday for our first merged directorate leadership team workshop. My flight was out of BWI departing at 7am (hoping to avoid past problems in MSP) and I was able to move it to an afternoon flight out of BWI instead to buy a little time and hopefully take the MARC train to the airport instead of trying the roads. When the MARC train suspended service I cancelled my trip even though my flight was still on. Turns out that was the right call since the flight ended up being delayed 4 hours and my connecting flight was later cancelled. We had to postpone the Tuesday, January 27th dialogue as well since the roads and sidewalks were still impassible. 

Despite school being cancelled for the first half of the week, Noa was still able to go to the NAIS Civic Leadership Summit Tuesday through Friday. Elaine and Noa took an uber to the hotel in Arlington since our car was still trapped. It was a good experience for Noa, though seeing the monuments at night in the bitter cold with all of the snowcrete probably was more exciting for all the kids who came to DC from around the country for the conference.

The aftermath of the storm was brutal as we entered into a ten day streak of high temperatures below freezing and brutally cold lows for DC, the longest such streak since 1989 and the sixth longest since records started in the 1800s. Our car was trapped by the impassible alley until one of the apartment buildings hired a private plow to clear the alley to 11th St. That meant I could get out a hammer and slowly chip away at the snowcrete outside our garage door to clear a path for us to escape. Just in time for us to pick up Noa from the leadership conference on Friday and make and deliver soup for Grate Patrol. Eventually the city sent a skid-loader to begin to clear out the alley to 10th St, but the remnants of this storm would last a long time.