We on the East Coast had a Nor’easter on
Friday. Well—it started overnight on Thursday and continued in some places
through the weekend. In many places, there were rains, floods and big
snowfalls. Here in the District They Call Columbia, it was mostly on Friday,
with really strong winds.
I heard it some during the night, but when I
got up at 0415, it seemed pretty calm, so I suited up and went to work. I’d
have loved to WFH, but I had a meeting that got rescheduled a couple of times due
to people’s calendars, so I felt I couldn’t bag it. Around my neighborhood
there was a lot of arboreal debris—mostly twigs and branches; no limbs or treed
down, so it didn’t seem so bad.
Even when it’s not particularly windy, right
when you get to the high rise next to the Metro station, it tends to blow. So I
prepared myself for a bit of a gale, and I got it. One of the Do-Not-Enter
signs over the garage exit was hanging by a single chain, and it and the other
sign were flapping back and forth. I scooted past on my way to the train.
I got into the office before 0600, logged in
and started my daily routine. WAMU reported that a lot of school districts were
closed, VRE and MARC commuter trains weren’t running, Metro was going at slower
speeds on above-ground tracks, and the Federal government was also closed. (I
had noticed a lot of slow-and-go on the inbound journey, but tbh that’s not
anything remarkable WRT Metro.) I was just about to make my first cup of coffee
when an email came round from the COO announcing that, since the Feds were
closed, so were we. (We follow their guidelines.) Welp, okay.
I cancelled the meeting, suited up again and headed
back to Metro. Brief convo with the security guard and building manager in the
lobby—they hadn’t heard about the office being closed, so the latter checked in
with the facilities manager, who also hadn’t heard about it. But I figure that
if the COO has said a thing, it’s a thing.
As we pulled into the station, I called a
friend to see if she was available for breakfast. She was. By this time, the
winds around the station were fierce, and there were snowflakes shooting
around. As I walked past the garage exit, I could see that the hanging sign was
now on the ground.
On my way home, I did see signs of must more
damage. Viz.: this completely uprooted tree at Reston Town Center:
And then this tree snapped off just above the
ground, about a block from my house:
That tree hadn’t been there when I went out at
0430; so it had come down somewhere between then and 1100 when I was driving
home. There was a strong scent of injured pine (like when you bring the
Christmas tree inside). At home I did some research work, cranked up the heat
and drank tea.
Saturday I was driving around Northern Virginia—Vienna,
McLean, Falls Church—and had to make several detours as roads were still
blocked off. Power was still out for thousands in the area, which I hadn’t even
thought about, because it was on here.
So here’s my big thanks for today: that in the
Nor’easter of March 2018, all of the very large trees around me remained
upright; my power and Internet service were not interrupted; I got an
unexpected and uncharacteristically extended chat with my friend; and no heavy
objects fell on my car.
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