PRESIDENT BARACK Obama called it Snowmageddon. The Washington Postcoined the word Snowpocalypse, while an official at the Maryland highway authority described this weekend's blizzard as the Big Whopper.
It is “as much snow as any one of us have seen in our lifetime”, said mayor Adrian Fenty.
Aircraft were grounded. Trains and buses stopped. At the peak of the 30-hour blizzard, on Saturday, some 218,000 homes and businesses were without electricity.
For the first time in 30 years, the US Postal Service failed to live up to its motto that “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night . . .” would prevent them delivering the mail.
Up to 32 inches (81cm) of snow fell in suburban Washington, making it the biggest blizzard in history, by some counts. In January 1922, 28 inches fell, killing 98 people when the roof of the Knickerbocker theatre caved in.
Two men died this weekend when they were hit by a lorry after going to help at the scene of a car crash. A hangar collapsed at Dulles airport, damaging four private aircraft. A tree fell on Joshua’s Temple First Born Church in northeast Washington, leaving only the vestibule and steeple standing. The roof of a school in Maryland also caved in.
Weather predictions in Fahrenheit never sound as dire as the below freezing figures in centigrade, so this correspondent at first failed to take the blizzard seriously.
An 85th birthday party for the eminent classics scholar Irishman Tom Halton was postponed.
Washingtonians stormed supermarkets, hoarded milk and bread.
By Friday evening, the streets and rooftops were blanketed in cotton wool. The capital slept in that pure silence that only snow brings, interrupted by the occasional snow shovel.
I thought of the great Paris flood in 1910 and how in old age I’ll be able to say I lived through the great blizzard of 2010. My central heating gasped its last. As the temperature dropped, I called my landlady. “You don’t want to hear this, but I’m in Florida,” she said. The heating repairman’s van had already been stuck once, and since the roads weren’t plowed, he couldn’t get here.
A nearby hotel offered rescue and a special storm rate, but I decided to stick it out in the cold apartment with Spike, the Irish moggy.
A friend earned my undying affection by driving through the blizzard to deliver an electric blanket, space heater and an art book entitled Impressionists in Winter; Effets de Neige.
Yesterday morning, it was difficult to believe that something so beautiful could be such a nuisance. Slowly, the denizens of Washington ventured out of hibernation into a dazzling white landscape. "Miracles do happen!" a neighbour exclaimed when he saw the New York Timeshad been delivered.
Enterprising Latin Americans armed with shovels knocked on doors to offer their services. Officials spoke of the need to clear the roads in time for this morning’s commute, but it was a Sisyphean task, all the more so because it’s supposed to snow again tomorrow and Wednesday.
In the meantime, I hope they’ll repair my central heating.