First Proper Snow!

We got our first proper snow yesterday, but a quick look at the weather forecast last night showed me that it wouldn't be around for long.  So today I decided to walk to work so I could see my first DC snow before it melted away in the days to come.  I snapped a few pictures so you, too, can see what it was like.

How many people get to walk to work and see the rising sun glinting off the dome of the Capitol on their way?

DC has a fraught relationship with snow.  You may remember last year's Snowpocalypse (or Snowmageddon - I can't seem to get people who suffered through it to agree on a name), which paralyzed the city for days.  But even smaller amounts of snow have been known to foul things up.  Portions of the Metro run above ground, and it takes just half a foot to cover the third rail and render those bits of the system useless (coincidentally, this includes the greater part of the Metro which serves northern Virginia and almost all of it in Maryland, but very little of the Metro within the District itself).  This batch of snow wasn't severe enough to snarl up Metro, but I'm waiting...

Isn't this pretty?  It was about 7:40 when I took this picture, and as you can see, nobody's out.  Long-time residents of the DC metro area are not generally fond of snow, and certainly not fond enough to go walking around in it on their way to work - not when they've got Metro, MARC, the Beltway, and the buses to take to work.  I, on the other hand, enjoy vistas like this one.  Everything seems somehow tamer with a light dusting of snow.  Take these skylights:

On a day without snow, these skylights which illuminate the tunnel linking the old and new buildings of the National Gallery of Art are sharp glass projections jutting up from the pavement.  With snow, it makes you wonder if in fact there's some spiky polyhedron buried under the snow, and just the tips are poking out.

Or maybe I'm just crazy.  But that's why you read, isn't it?