There’s a line in an old poem that speaks of places where “the best is like the worst” and in terms of temperature, of the warmest resembling the coldest, Washington seemed much like that on Friday.
The almost monotonous sameness of the day’s hourly readings might have helped win a place for Friday’s weather here in the ranks of the bland and the undistinguished. If every day has some distinction, Friday’s may have been in its gray lack of distinction.
As of 5 p.m. the high temperature in Washington was 39 degrees and the low was 32, leaving little to choose between them. Both were below normal.
Specifically, only 7 degrees separated Friday’s warmest moments from its coldest, and few days in Washington show such subdued and confined swings, such seeming lack of thermal drama.
So far this month, only two days have shown a smaller disparity between high and low, Dec. 2 and Dec. 5, where the journey made by the mercury between the two poles of hot and cold was only 6 degrees.
Available records indicate that only two days last month, Nov. 20 and Nov. 30 matched Friday in the almost negligible gap between high and low.
It is not that common.
Possibly, then, members of some homebound car pool might have chosen to opine on Friday’s weather by quoting from Rudyard Kipling’s “On the Road to Mandalay.”
Its remark about the geographical confluence of the superlatives “best” and “worst” might have been employed to characterize a Washington day in which the mercury never strayed from the chill 30s.
And the best, or warmest moments varied but a few degrees from the worst, or coldest.
In addition, Friday’s bland absence of meteorological excitement may have been enhanced by the clouds and color that dominated its skies. Friday’s skies were largely gray, not a color generally described as striking or arresting.
It was wintry, but seemingly without the electricity often transmitted by icy winter air and skies of winter blue.
And, although snow, inevitably, seemed likely to soon become an integral part of the area’s conversation and concerns, Friday, as of well after sunset, provided neither rain nor snow.
Interestingly, of all the hours for the clouds to seem at their minimum, it was just before the time of sunset. The effect of this seemed to prevent Friday from creating the fiery display of gaudy color that often marks the end of daylight.
Clouds help to create those memorable sights, and without them even a sunset seems muted and suppressed, its opportunities unfulfilled.
At sunset Friday, a bright orange strip ran along the western horizon.
Appearing relatively featureless, it seemed reminiscent perhaps of forms of nonrepresentational painting that may not have immediate appeal to all.
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