Perhaps seldom does a single day show so much of what it represented as did Saturday, with its snowflakes and clouds, its chills and its sunshine, all suited to a day deep in the mainstream of winter in Washington.
By their beguiling nature and in deference to their traditional allure, snowflakes probably deserve priority in any discussion of Saturday’s weather in D.C.
Saturday’s snowfall, it is true, may have made small visual impression, and many may have slept through it. But in its report on the day’s conditions, the National Weather Service said Washington measured one-tenth of one inch of snow.
That happens to be the most in the capital all month.
It was seen at times between 9:20 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. in the area of Reagan National Airport where the weather service makes its official observations for the District.
It arrived amid a conglomeration of various forms of cold weather precipitation, including ice pellets and sleet. Rain also fell.
But it was not only the swirl of snowflakes that confirmed Saturday as a worthy representative of winter. It was also the temperature. The maximum as of 4 p.m. was 43 degrees. That was just one degree short of the normal high temperature in Washington on a Jan. 17.
Seasons are cyclical. Even deep in winter, days do not grow ever-colder. Temperatures sink to a low point, and then begin to rise. Washington’s normal daily high temperature is now 44 degrees. But perhaps happily, that is not too cold, and is the coldest it gets.
For six days in the middle of January, six days of far more darkness than daylight, six days sunk in the depths of winter, Washington’s normal high temperature wallows at 44 degrees.
Of those six days of maximum chill, Saturday was the fourth. Two more remain, Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday, the normal high temperature in the District takes one small step upward, to 45 degrees.
One small step for the thermometer, but a giant leap for seasonal change. After that, though much more winter remains, it is onward and upward.
This all seemed part of the meteorological and even psychological significance of Saturday. It was a day that displayed winter in many of its faces and guises. It was a day with a few minutes of snow, a day with hours of cloud, and a day on which the sun descended below the western horizon out of a sky that was finally clear and blue.
When it set, the sun went down in a brilliant blaze of orange flame, too bright to behold.
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