Tuesday, February 01, 2011

The Last Week of January

The week started out fine and then something normal happened that somehow made things crazy around here....it snowed. Wednesday around 12:30 there was an email sent out to everyone at my workplace. This is part of the actual email:

"The U.S. National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory through 4 a.m. ET on Thursday, Jan. 27, for the D.C. Metro area. Latest reports indicate that snowfall will begin this afternoon and continue into the evening with accumulation of three to six inches possible overnight. Locations north and west of the city may see as much as 10 inches of accumulation.

Employees in the D.C. Metro area working at office locations impacted by the onset of severe weather may depart early today and take work home, where appropriate, following the early dismissal guidelines in the Inclement Weather Policy...

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has issued a two-hour early dismissal for government employees today. So, those working at government client sites should plan to follow the guidance of the client.

As always, the safety of our employees is paramount and you are encouraged to use your best judgment regarding your commute."

Once I heard the ice rain on my office window I decided to leave. It was around 2:30 when I left and it ended up taking me an hour to get home. It usually takes me 30 -40 minutes to get home but the snow was coming down fast. I didn't think my commute was bad. The snow had fallen so fast over the next few hours that they ended up closing the schools on Thursday and Friday. The other interesting thing was the "Thundersnow"...I didn't experience it but some other people that I work with did. They said the sky was dark and there was thunder, lightening and snow mixed with ice rain!

Thursday we went skiing and had a blast. The conditions were great, there was lots of powder-ery snow and no lines for the lifts! We'd ski for a bit then take a cookie break....


ski for a bit then take a snack break...


On Saturday we took the boys to the Washington Auto Show and they had lots of fun running around, getting in all the cars and scoring free stuff. Here's a photo of the boys on the drive there.


The car in the background was the one from the movie "Back to the Future". James is doing his best to protest having his picture taken....if he closes his eyes no one is there.
When I got to work on Monday I began to hear all of the horror stories people had of driving home from work on Wednesday. There were some people that left work and ended up being stuck in traffic for 9 hours!! People that normally get home in 15 minutes were stuck in traffic for 3 hours!! These were the people that didn't leave work early for whatever reason. There were jokes on Facebook about not picking up to-go cups off the side off the roads...I can only imagine what people have to do when they are stuck in traffic for 9 hours and need to go to the bathroom!

So, now it's Tuesday and the schools are closed again because of ice rain and we're supposed to get more tonight! We'll see how this all plays out. I'm glad that I can at least ride the bike on the trainer if I can't run outside or the gym is closed. I am thankful that it's not that cold outside compared to some other places I've been hearing about. It's about 36 degrees out right now and no sign of rain or snow.
Stay safe and stay warm!

4 comments:

Big Daddy Diesel said...

Its interesting to hear all the reports of snow and how their city reacts when they dont usually get snow. We got the storm here, of course, we werent allowed to leave, nothing shuts down here.

funderson said...

I'm glad you enjoyed the snow!

Teamarcia said...

Yay for snow. I'd love to ski again. It been yeeeears.

Molly said...

we've had about 120 inches of snow so far this year, and today, the kids finally had a snow day! And that was only because it was icy. Looks like you guys had some fun!