Scenes from the Blizzard of 2010

32.4". Unbelievable. The initial weather reports prior to a flake even hitting the ground on Friday had everyone scrambling to the supermarkets for toilet paper, bread, milk and beer based on an estimated accumulation of 10-20". After I returned home from work early on Friday to beat the slippery commute, my intrepid husband decided to drive over to the local pub for a couple of hours to get a jump on the impending sense of isolation that was sure to set in over the weekend. While there, one of his compadres informed him that the government had been holding back on information relating to snow totals much higher than what had been broadcast, to prevent panic. Personally, I don't think I necessariy belive this, because I don't know that hearing 40" would make me panic any more than 20", if I were a panicking sort of person. I might have been more diligent to stock up on more essential provisions, though.

As it was, we ended up with approximately 32.4". It snowed from 10:30am on Friday until 5pm on Saturday, when the sky turned blue and the sun came out.

I always think I can "feel" my house when I'm sleeping. I could be in a totally sound sleep, yet hear (or feel) the tiniest change in the house that will wake me instantly. I've always been like that. The tiny click from my cable box woke me at 5:15 on Saturday morning. After two such power flickers and a massive blue flash that lit up my bedroom (even behind the blinds), the power went out. Ugh. Here I'd been spouting off to people about how the power lines of the Ashburn neighborhoods were underground and we were unlikely to ever lose power (hey, we lived in Adams Morgan in DC for 11 years and never lost power there once due to the underground configurations!). That's what I get. The entire neighborhood was out. We didn't panic about this, other than the fear that we wouldn't be able to have our morning coffee. That particular worry was removed when Steve dug a path to the grill out on the back deck and boiled water in a pot on the grill's side burner, snow swirling all around him. It was quite a sight, and I was grateful. The second concern was that our gas fireplace had an electric ignition switch. I had also been previously spouting off that we had a gas fireplace and if we were to lose power, all we'd have to do would be to put a flame to the pilot light. I had completely forgotten that our fireplace has a glass front, and that even if we could get it lit, how would we turn it off? Steve was down on the floor in front of the glass door, puzzling over this very thing, when he had the brilliant idea to just flip the ignition switch, just because. If he hadn't done this one thing he thought he was going to look stupid for doing, we would have looked even more stupid for not having done it. He flipped the switch, and that beautiful flame jumped up over the fake logs and began to warm the quickly-chilling house. Fabulous!!! Don't know how it worked, don't care. Just happy it did. The power came back on at 2pm, just as I was telling a very unhappy Samantha that she couldn't have grilled cheese for lunch.

Here are some pics from the day.