With Washington still burdened Saturday by snow and ice, January ended with an eighth consecutive subfreezing day, leaving the capital to seek its thermal fortunes in February.
Turning a calendar page, especially in closing out January, traditionally Washington’s coldest month, may always arouse optimism. But Saturday gave little cause for cheer.
It was, by the thermometer at least, one of the coldest days of the winter and one of the coldest of the current cold wave. Highs have generally stayed in the 20s.
Saturday’s high temperature reached only 22 degrees, 10 below freezing and 24 below normal for the date. Such frigid temperatures seem without any thermodynamic ability to persuade ice and snow to steal away of their own accord.
Even 40 days after the winter solstice, it appeared that the ice and snow clogging many streets in the Washington area in sheets, clumps and curbside Everests would be dislodged only by the ministrations of heavy machinery.
The low temperature on Saturday in Washington was 11 degrees, which is 19 below the normal low reading for the last day of January in the capital.
Yet, even given such obvious and omnipresent cold, a cold that may even have begun to wear out winter’s welcome, Saturday had its attractions.
For much of the day, Washington could breathe air of great clarity, air that seemed almost capable of producing an electric charge of exhilaration.
Moreover, it appeared that each day, by small increments, the sun was being winched higher aloft. By Saturday, so far past the winter solstice, the elevation had become noticeable.
It was the sort of thing that could provide at least a semblance of radiant warmth. Especially when combined with the warmth reflecting from the omnipresent sheets of white snow.
It gave the air a vivid brightness that seemed to challenge the cold for control of mood and outlook, to raise midwinter spirits and to provide some means of mitigating the harshest of the cold.
Occasionally, under the bright sun, wisps of steam escaping from chimneys cast swiftly swirling shadows onto nearby fields of snow.
Pale gray and fragile-seeming, the shadows streamed, bent and tumbled in the breeze.
At one or two spots late in the day, a pink light tinged and tinted the leaping plumes of steam as the sun set behind them.
Bare trees and branches were silhouetted against fields of snow, silently spelling out winter’s message.
With the sun’s departure, the stark black and white of trees and snow swiftly faded into darkness.
Ahead loomed February, doubtless carrying the hopes of many for warmth, relief and a change of scene.
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