Even if it failed to provide any cold-weather quality to icy excess, Friday sent Washington plunging toward the deepest realms of winter, based on both the calendar and the thermometer.
In the annual search for sample days to symbolize the very depths of winter in the capital, Friday seemed qualified by mercury alone, with a high temperature as of late afternoon that rose only 4 degrees above freezing.
The 36-degree reading at 7 p.m. was 8 degrees below the normal high in the District for the date.
The low temperature in the morning was 24 degrees, 6 degrees below normal. Only five days here since the start of December have seen the mercury dip so low. Only one day this month has had a lower low.
For meteorologists, the three winter months begin on Dec. 1. That places Friday close to the midpoint of meteorological winter, close to what might seem the deepest part of it.
Snow, ice and wind all contribute to the harshness of a winter day. But none seemed necessary ingredients on Friday.
What snow there was amounted essentially to frequent mention in forecasts, which cited various possibilities of it in days to come. As of 4 p.m., it was only words and no flakes.
Although many find snow an inconvenience, it endows the environment with scenic qualities. Absence of snow seemed if anything to add to Friday’s bleakness.
The ingredients of winter bleakness include gray skies, a chill in the air and the spiritual sense, less easily assigned a numerical value, that spring remains a long way off.
Dulles International Airport, on the northwestern edge of the Washington metropolitan area, seemed to turn in one of the area’s stronger portrayals of deep winter.
As of 5 p.m. the high reading at Dulles was 33 degrees. That was 9 degrees below normal. The morning low of 18 was 7 degrees lower than normal.
The sun often provides cheer and at least a sense of warmth even in wintry conditions. But on Friday afternoon, it could seldom be seen.
On the other hand, gloom was not a required response to Friday. Study of the afternoon sky may have suggested the brooding allure of an overcast: its stripes and striations, its discernible shades of gray. How it was not truly formless or featureless, but swelling in spots, darker in places, lighter in others, on the verge of being teased apart in still others.
As the day went on, and the word seemed confined to forecasts, comfort may have come, hour by hour, from an appreciation that whatever the weather had brought the District this month, it still had not included snow.
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