Gratitude Monday: safety in the storm

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.

 I made it safely to Panera Bread and was half a cup of coffee in when my friend arrived. We hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks, so we had a good, long chatty session—almost three hours by the time we left. It was very good to catch up in time that wasn’t earmarked for errands. Kind of like a snow day, without having to shovel snow. (There were those few flakes, but we never even reached the flurry stage.)

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.