Laid Low by the Virtual Storm

I stumbled to the bathroom about 4:30 a.m. yesterday and with sleepy fingers pulled apart the miniblinds and looked outside.

"Is it snowing?" My Lovely Wife asked after I'd slipped back into bed and hiked the covers up to my chin.

"I don't know. I didn't have my glasses on. I don't think so."

I was troubled. I may be pretty much blind without my glasses, but I am able to discern areas of light and dark. And peering at the early morning neighborhood, I had seen more dark than light: grass, dirt, pavement, roof shingles. The snow that was predicted to begin at midnight and entomb the Washington area must have been falling everywhere but on our corner of Silver Spring.

About 6 a.m., when the Kelly family normally rises snarling from its lair, the clock radio came on and WTOP informed us that school was canceled for everyone east of the Mississippi. The federal government also had decided to pack it in. The snow wasn't here yet, but it would be coming soon. Another ice age had descended on the Shenandoah Valley, and the white stuff was making its way north.

But again when I looked outside, all I could see was the same vista I'd seen before: grass, dirt, pavement, roof shingles.

I began to wonder if this was a case of the Emperor's New Snow. All of the hallmarks of a major blizzard were there -- the fevered media reports, the school cancellations, the dread mixed with a sort of childlike anticipation.

The only thing that was missing was the snow. The guest of honor was running late.

Consider two possibilities:

1. You are not expecting snow, and you awaken to a blizzard.

2. You are expecting a blizzard, and you awaken to no snow.

To me, the second is much worse than the first. The first is a delight, an unexpected gift.

The second is a letdown, an anticlimax. I spent yesterday morning feeling out of sorts and vaguely guilty. (My children, on the other hand, had no problem accepting their fifth consecutive day off from school.)

I suppose I should be glad that nature can still play tricks on us. Usually we know a week ahead of time what the weather is going to be. The details might be sketchy, but the general picture is there.

Though this doesn't mean we can change the weather, it does rob it of some of its chthonic power. (Go ahead and look it up; I had to.) Freed from weather angst, we have time to worry about things beyond our powers of prediction, such as who will get kicked off of "American Idol."

I'm nostalgic for those days when the weather could regularly catch us unawares. Every time we add a few days to the forecast -- when the five-day forecast grows to the 10-day, and the 10-day to the 14-day -- our planet seems a little less interesting. (Of course, such weather surprises probably weren't always a delight. Get caught in an ice storm on a hike to the next village and you might end up flash-frozen like a Mrs. Paul's fish stick.)

Yesterday morning I found myself feeling sorry for the meteorologists, not the blow-dried TV weathermen and women, but the government-issue National Weather Service scientists who, even if they want to, aren't allowed to run outside, shake their fists at the heavens and shout: "Come on, you @$%#!, snow! I predicted snow, now snow, %*&@!"

I called over to the Sterling forecast office to find out what happened -- or what didn't.

They'd experienced a sort of double whammy: The air above the Earth's surface was drier then expected, causing the snow they'd predicted to magically dematerialize.

"It evaporated before it hit the ground," said Brian Guyer, a meteorologist there. So, you see, it was snowing early yesterday morning, just not anywhere near us.

The other factor was that once the snow did start reaching us on Earth, the ground wasn't cold enough at first for it to actually stick.

None of this was good news for a point of view I've been formulating since reading a column by my colleague Steven Pearlstein, who wrote last week that he was driven nuts by "Washington's weather wimpiness."

It's a common complaint: We crumble at the first flake. To which I would say: What do you expect? Sure we get two or three snowstorms in a typical year, but it doesn't snow often enough or heavily enough for us to invest in the sort of snow-clearing infrastructure, or adopt the snow-centric mind-set, that people in Buffalo have.

I also don't buy the bromide that Washingtonians can't drive in snow because so many of us come from someplace else. First of all, that's not true -- Washington is no more transient than other large cities -- and secondly, if it were true, we'd have as many people moving here from Points North as from Points South. There'd be as many transplants accustomed to driving in snow as not.

Anyway, there's really no sense lamenting the fact that Washington is laid low by snow. It simply is. And yesterday it wasn't even real snow. It was preemptive snow, presumptive snow.

Of course, I'm writing this at 4 p.m. Monday. By the time you read it, there might be two feet of the stuff out there.

Strong to the Finish?

Falls Church reader Charles Davis says his normal choice for fast-food chicken is KFC, but he ate at a Popeye's recently. He was startled to see that there was one glaring omission among the half-dozen or so vegetables available as side dishes: If Popeye went to Popeye's, he couldn't get spinach.

My e-mail: kellyj@washpost.com.