It was Washington’s coldest day of the season, and it snowed, and the northwest wind had sharp teeth. Sunday seemed in every way to be winter, and why not. What more affinity with the coming season could be asked of a gray December day only a week from the solstice?
Perhaps a little more snow might have made the day seem even more wintry. Officially D.C. received only 0.4 inches of snow. That is not in itself a great deal.
If snow and dust are comparable, that amount, less than half an inch, might qualify as only a dusting.
But its significance lay in its mere presence, as a signifier and symbol of a wintry Sunday and of the coming season. It greeted the city as residents woke, blanketing grassy expanses in white. Its message and meaning seemed clear.
At Dulles International Airport, the snow measured almost twice as much as in the District. But it still failed to amount to an inch, with an official total of 0.7 inches.
But despite its sparseness, the snow was durable and tenacious, and it undeniably contributed to Sunday’s overall aura of winter.
In its refusal to melt away with the coming of afternoon, the morning snow attested to the long hours Washington spent Sunday in temperatures below the freezing point.
At 6 a.m., the official temperature was 33 degrees, one precarious degree above freezing. The next two hours showed readings in Washington of 32. From then on, the city was below freezing.
As sunset neared, the temperature slid slowly downward. At 7 p.m., Washington seemed to be in full winter mode.
Snow lay on the ground. The wind gusted to 33 mph. And the mercury read 19 degrees.
By one degree, that was the coldest temperature measured in Washington this season. One day earlier this month had touched 20 degrees.
But on Sunday, for the first time this season, at 7 p.m. Washington’s temperature fell into the teens. A sustained wind was clocked at 21 mph. It was dark, and the city was deprived of whatever cheer was provided earlier by glimpses of the sun.
The 7 p.m. wind chill was given as four degrees.
At one earlier moment there had been a 45 mph gust.
And according to general custom and tradition, true winter had not even begun.
Recognition on Sunday that winter still held the right to present a full season of snow, wind and cold might have created as much of a shudder as the northwest wind.
It would be a full week until the day of least daylight, the day of the solstice, the day that generally is regarded as the inauguration of winter.
If days can be thought to ask questions, Sunday seemed to interrogate Washington about the need to await the solstice. Winter in every way: snow, wind, cold, seemed to have already arrived.
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