Many are the signs and sights of winter in Washington, and many may be the explanations for them. But for the weather Friday, the day after Christmas, five days after the solstice, one simple explanation seemed to suffice: It’s winter.
Not all winter days require snow, but in the capital, as reported by the National Weather Service, there were indeed some falling flakes. Not all winter days demand gray skies, but Friday, skies seemed implacably gray.
It isn’t every winter day that must be cold, but Friday seemed indisputably chilly with afternoon temperatures in the 30s.
Friday’s official high temperature was 41 degrees. That might not seem frighteningly frigid, but it was deceptive. That reading came a few minutes after midnight Friday morning, and appeared to represent the waning warmth of the day before.
Recall that on Thursday, Christmas Day, the temperature in the District touched 60. No special meteorological instinct was required to recognize that as a deviant figure, and it was. The official high on Christmas was 13 degrees above the normal 47 degree high.
Thursday seemed reminiscent of spring, or fall, but not of winter.
Friday, on the other hand, appeared to be winter by almost any standard. Most of the day was spent in the 30s, well below normal. Afternoon highs were about 25 degrees colder than the day before.
Spring, an impostor, had been found out, and sent away.
Around 3 p.m. Friday, when the temperature often reaches its peak for the day, the mercury read 35 degrees. Not freezing, but only three degrees above. And 12 degrees colder than the normal high for the date. So if Christmas may have suggested spring, winter asserted its rights on Friday.
Little Christmas cheer could be seen in the sky. The gray overcast, almost featureless, persisted through most of the daylight hours, almost impervious to penetration by sunshine. A glance at those clouds, often no more than a mile above, made it easy to conclude: winter.
A few snowflakes could be seen at some point. They were too few to measure but did suggest a proximity to winter. The official report on the day’s conditions described a “trace” of snow.
A light rain also fell at times. It seemed composed of small, cold droplets that only made the chill of the day seem chillier, its gloom seem gloomier.
But on the pavements, under headlights and streetlights, the moisture did seem to glisten, creating a bright note on a dour day, the 360th of the this year, five days until the eve of a new one.
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