The Blizzard

All federal employees were excused four hour before the end of their normal workday yesterday to get ready for the impending snowstorm. They wanted to get everyone home and off the streets before driving got too hazardous and so the road crews could prepare and clear the roadways. We heard conflicting reports on the amount of snow that was due to fall in our area. It started off with estimates of at least a foot and just escalated from there to the probability of 30 inches in some areas of Virginia and Maryland.

I took this photo when I got off work yesterday, just after the snow started falling. It had been falling for about an hour and a half when I took this first photo.


It continued snowing and started to come down much faster. I took this photo after a couple of hours of snowfall.


It snowed all night and got much windier. When I looked outside at about one in the morning, I was amazed at how bright it was out there. It could have been dusk instead of the middle of the night. Snow is an amazing reflective surface.

This morning, when I woke at about 9 am, it was still snowing. As you can tell, it was snowing pretty hard, so you couldn't see very far. Here is a photo from this morning.



Finally this afternoon, it started to taper off. There was a ton of snow on my deck, and I took these photos.

My neighbor's car buried in the snow.

After seeing my neighbor's car, I'm so glad that I have an attached garage. I pay extra for it, but weather like this makes it so worthwhile.

Sometime around 5 pm, the sun came out! It was truly the calm after the storm with a beautiful sunset, topping off a winter wonderland. In all, I think they reported 23 inches here in Ashburn; but there were drifts much deeper. I hear we're in for another storm beginning on Tuesday. Hopefully, we'll be dug out by then.