We had been so lucky. The first five days of 2025 had gone by, and there had been no snow. But now it’s caught up with us. You can see from the picture below that we have about five inches or so on the ground, it is 9 a.m., and the snow is supposed to continue until about midnight.

You ask why is all of this snow falling? I do not assume that it is coincidental that today is the day that the day that Congress is to certify Donald Trump’s victory, and that it is crucial to beef up security around Washington to keep all of those MALA (Make America Little Again) Harris supporters from rioting to keep the Congress from doing what some people (i.e., the MAGAs) believe they should do. We shall see what happens, but I understand that millions of Democrats are massing in the DC metropolitan area, and were it not for the snow, were preparing to accost the Capitol to disrupt the proceedings. After all, isn’t that what Americans do?

Okay, let’s turn the page on that. What does a lot of snow remind me of? First, let it be said that I remember no snow storms when I was young. That includes the major Thanksgiving snow storm that was apparently raging the night I was born. The first snow storms I actually remember took place when I was in high school, and I remember hiking from my high school home in what must have been almost a foot of snow, a distance (thanks, GPS) of 3.9 miles, with no sidewalks. Then, I remember the snow storms during college and law school, which I remember we basically just ignored.

Except for one. That was freshman year at Harvard 65 years ago, when my still friend Larry Gillis invited a bunch of us to go to his family’s summer cabin in Derry, New Hampshire for the weekend. It sounded like a great idea, and we plowed through the snow looking forward to a beautiful New England winter weekend. What we did not know was that the cabin had not been winterized, and that there was no heat, and no electricity, and no running water.

And then there was that Veteran’s Day in the late 1970s, when I don’t think there was a forecast for a lot of snow (after all, it was early November), and I had a meeting with a client somewhere off I-66 in Fairfax County. It started to snow, I did not worry, and I had no idea that when I drove down the ramp to get onto the interstate, that I would be on that highway for about three hours, with no opportunity to get off. Did I say three hours? Maybe it was four. Or five.

Before 1986 when changes were made to the tax laws, you could close a real estate transaction as late as December 31 and take tax benefits for the full calendar year. Sometime in the early 80s, I was in Buffalo for a closing that needed to take place before year end. It was quite a complicated transaction – the purchase of and arrangement of rehabilitation funding for an assortment of residential buildings under a HUD low income rental housing program. There had been all sorts of issues delaying the closing, and we were working through them one by one, facing a deadline of December 31 for the closing. On the 30th, the snow began to fall. But, after all, it was Buffalo. Big deal. Except it turned out that it was. It was a major snow fall, and mid-morning on December 31, both the federal government and the City of Buffalo announced that offices would be closing (I think “in an hour”) and that everybody should leave. Now, we were almost finished with the closing. I think everything had been signed, or would be signed before the HUD office was abandoned, but we had to get a deed (or I think it was multiple deeds) recorded by the end of the day, and the Recorder of Deeds had announced they were closing. You wonder what happened? We did get it done, with the Recorder (I don’t know that was his actual title) agreed to stay behind in his closed office to record the deed. And, while we had been panicking trying to get everything accomplished, what did most of the younger (I was then younger) HUD employees thinking about? Not getting home and hunkering down. They were all excited about the possibility of getting in some unexpected skiing.

And then there was what was meant to be a day trip to meet with a client in Bluefield WV. It was a warm  winter day, and I remember that I did not even bring a heavy winter coat. I had an early evening plane back home, but after lunch, snow began to fall. And fall. And fall. Then, the airport closed, and I made arrangements to spend the night. Luckily, there was a small restaurant across the street that stayed open, although I think I might have been the only customer. The next morning, the very small airport was still closed, but the roads looked okay, so I thought I would rent a car and drive to Roanoke where the airport was functioning. Except that the only place you could rent a car in Bluefield was the airport. I was in the motel for two or three nights, my only company being the Winter Olympics on TV.

Some other snow surprises? One was exploring the Big Island (“Hawaii”) on our 30th anniversary trip to the furthest west and southern state and discovering that there was snow, and a lot of snow, on top of Mauna Kea, while it was 80 degrees below. And, in 1972, I remember a similar shock when I drove up a mountain road near Granada, Spain, in early June and I found myself surrounded by snow which was deeper than I was tall.

When I was a practicing lawyer, I made it a point not to let snow stop me from collecting my hourly rates. And I remember many times trudging to and from the Van Ness Metro station and our house, a distance of about three quarters of a mile, through dirty snow banks. And I certainly remember those few enormous snows that we have had in DC, to which I am sure today’s snow will not compare.

At any rate, no problem. As they say, “This too will melt.” But not soon.