For once, D.C. area gets some respect for coping with snow

Are we flinty yet?

Last year, during a snow "event" that now seems laughably insignificant, President Obama managed to get under the region's skin with some climatic trash talk. Reacting for the first time as a parent of D.C. area schoolkids to the region's habit of canceling classes at the drop of a flake, the president piled it on:

"My children's school was canceled today," Obama said derisively during a discussion about the economy at the White House. "Because of what? Some ice?"

The president, who grew up in a snow-free archipelago, proceeded to hail the plowing prowess of his adopted Snow Belt home town. "We're going to have to try to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this," he said. "I'm saying, when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things."

Ouch. When the leader of the free world questions your snow manliness, it stings. School officials defended their quick-closing ways. Politicians pointed out, again, all the reasons snow has such a devastating effect on Washington (we can't maintain a Chicago-size snow budget when big storms hit only once a decade or so; the freeze-thaw temperatures of the mid-Atlantic make snow particularly heavy and treacherous here; we have hills). And residents just shrugged and went out to buy more toilet paper. You know, just in case.

What a difference 30 inches makes. This time even the president, who has been known to walk about in freezing temperatures without a coat, acknowledged that Washington has been hit by "Snowmageddon."

Obama's motorcade was involved in a snow-related fender bender Saturday. And then a branch snapped off over the White House driveway, falling on a car full of reporters.

Asked whether the president still considers Washington's weather prep lacking in flint, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said this time is different.

"I think the president's 'flinty' comment had to do with the existence of only a few inches of snow," Gibbs said Friday. "I think even a transplanted Hawaiian to Chicago has sufficient respect for a forecast of nearly two feet of snow. And being from Alabama, I am happy to inform you I will be getting off the road and watching you all try to drive."

Other transplanted Chicagoans also gave the Blizzard of '10 its due, allowing that it would have been a big deal even in the Windy City. And some even grudgingly expressed admiration for Washington's response to the Big One.

"People are actually handling it pretty well this time," said WTOP (103.5 FM) political commentator Mark Plotkin, a Chicago native who usually delights in ridiculing the snow hysteria of the nation's capital. "D.C. is definitely doing better than it used to when Marion Barry refused to come home from the Super Bowl to oversee the plowing."

By contrast, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has seized on a massive snow-removal effort as a way to burnish his credentials as a leader who can get things done. Fenty led an effort to clear city streets over the weekend, and his aides gleefully pointed out that the D.C. government was open Monday while Obama's federal workforce was told to stay home.

Last year, Fenty accepted Obama's barb with aplomb: "I give him a lot of credit for being perceptive. I've often thought that D.C. needs to not be so knee-jerk in closing -- not just the schools, but so many of our government buildings and stores and everything else."

Katherine Latterner, for one, agreed. The D.C. schools employee said the street clearing has been much better in her Brightwood neighborhood than in previous years. "I was here for the blizzard in '96, and we didn't get out for two weeks," Latterner said as she left a Safeway on Georgia Avenue NW. "My street was plowed early this time. Of course, there's nowhere to put the snow, so I still haven't dug my car out."

Chicago native Laura Kriv said she was pleased that some school systems managed to get the kids in for at least half a day y as the storm built on Friday. In years past, the Silver Spring resident would have expected schools to close based on the forecast alone. "I think they handled it a little better this time," she said. "Maybe they're getting used to it."

The fact that this was the second major storm of the winter might be teaching Washingtonians a little flintiness, said Lynn Sweet, Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times, who has been posted here since 1993.

"If they didn't know what to do in a major snowstorm, the one in December gave them a dry run," she said. "People are learning to keep their shovels out the way we do in Chicago."

Efforts to reach an official representative of flinty Chicago to comment on Washington's new winter resilience failed. A recording at the City of Chicago's office in the District, its Office of Intergovernmental Affairs on Pennsylvania Avenue, said the agency was closed "due to inclement weather."