The District of Columbia funds the largest standing army the world has ever known and prints the currency that makes the world go round. Through a signature on sanctions or the shake of a hand, the district has the ability to make or break entire economies. But evidently, we cannot handle a little inclement weather older than man himself.
Winter Storm Fern was indeed severe, with four to seven inches of snow in the Beltway followed by an unusual six to nine inches of sleet, rendering the entire water volume equivalent to a 20-inch blizzard. But Sunday’s snowstorm was not unprecedented (the district has seen colder spells and higher-volume storms), and more importantly, it went largely as meteorologists forecasted. The men of my medium-density neighborhood spent Sunday intermittently scooping out fresh powder, then fresh crystals as they fell, and then crushing the remains on Monday before they had a chance to crystallize into the sort of dangerous and slippery icebergs that make walking an Olympic sport.
It seems that almost every local government in the Washington metro failed to get the memo, except for the literal Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. The sidewalks and crosswalks within the capital remain coated with mini mountains of ice, while entire city streets in the Virginia suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria are still only navigable by Zamboni or snowmobile. Meanwhile, despite requiring a pair of hiking boots, at one point climbing on my hands and knees, and (accidentally) sledding down an ice-glazed hill that Fairfax County has decided is optional for use by the disabled and the elderly, I managed to take the bus that resumed fewer than 48 hours after the storm ended. Whether this is a testament to the exceptional performance of the Metro under Randy Clarke or a galling indictment of the rest of government is for the reader to decide.
Somehow, my suburban barre studio was back open for classes two days before the district’s public schools and possibly a full school week before virtually every other county in the DMV. Instead of learning from the generational disaster of 2020, that in any crisis, public schools must be the first priority for governments to reopen, they’re once again on pace to be the last buildings to physically resume normal services.
Conservatives correctly pilloried professional kook Candace Owens for her shock and awe that ice from the storm wasn’t melting when the day briefly hit 30 degrees, but the local government and her equally birdbrained neighbors demonstrated a similar understanding of the freezing point of water. Unlike missed calls of the past, local meteorologists have basically gotten the January cold snap completely right, correctly predicting that the weather in the DMV would not crack 32 degrees for at least a week after the storm. Yet for some reason, while my husband was shoveling pounds of snow and ice alongside retired men and an active combat veteran, the governments that taxpayers fund specifically to keep public services and infrastructure accessible and operational were doing nothing, instead waiting for the snow and sleet to freeze into cement bricks of steely ice.
Much like Owens, local governments seemed shocked that below-freezing weather would fail to do the job of fleets of snow plows and good, old-fashioned elbow grease. Washington might govern the world, but it can’t even manage itself through a tale as old as some bad weather.
