Snow News

US Capital Freezes
Priscilla Huff, Washington DC Bureau

The US federal government is shut.

The U.S. House of Representatives gave up and went on President's Day recess early.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is planning a trip to Saudi Arabia. Coincidence? Not when the snow is so deep, the weather forecasters have lost count of the inches.

That is my Lhasa Apso, Ginger, on a walk through about 2 inches of snow...that has already been plowed and shoveled three times. The mound of snow next to the bridge is well over a meter and a half.

And yes, there's snow as far as anyone can see. Those are trunks of Kwanzan Cherry trees. Washingtonians are deeply skeptical their famous cherries will ever bloom again, because spring may never come. The lamp posts are about two meters high...and some of them are buried nearly to the the lamp.

My neighbors are wondering, as they try to dig out their cars, where do they put the snow? One neighbor got a car about 95% dug out...and discovered it wasn't his.

Washington is a melting pot. My Iranian neighbors wised up and bought a shovel. The Indian family all works together, but they don't have enough shovels to go around. My Chinese neighbors don't know what to do. And, the Russian teenager keeps himself busy shoveling out cars.

As for myself, I was born in Buffalo, NY, one of the snow capitals of the United States. Yesterday, before this latest snow started, someone observed that the local airport had gotten more snow than Buffalo.

And, for Ginger, he thinks its all fabulous. Lhasa Apsos are the lion dogs of the Buddhist temples of Tibet and Ginger loves to go for a long walk and check out the igloo the young men dug out nearby.

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