snow day

This winter was a little colder than normal, with more snow and longer harder freezes than typical winters.  When there is a threat of inclement weather, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has to make a decision, in advance, as to whether or not the government offices should shut down so that everyone has time to plan and prepare.  Further, there are a huge number of federal government employees in the area, many of whom commute significant distances to get to work, so OPM is sometimes a little over-careful when they call the day.

This winter OPM closed government offices more often than I remember having happened in several years (excepting the snowmageddon year), but some days that we had off weren't all that bad.  An early example, from sometime right at the beginning of the new year looked like this by the early evening:

look out for that black ice

Presumably, for the sake of safety and a fear of litigious repercussions, they are sometimes overly cautious.  However, it seems to be a good practice, because in the greater metro area, which is pretty huge, while I have no real snow to speak of, way on the other side of the district a friend of mine had most of a foot of snow from the same storm.

All I can say is that this winter I was happy to have a white collar job that has "snow days".  This year I got a bunch of free time off of work, including some that serendipitously came on days that I needed to take off anyway.