This has truly been a tough winter, but when my Reston-based daughter told me that we had to bring our own parking space if we visited, I knew things had gotten especially difficult in the snowbound suburbs of Washington.
I am sure Reston folks know the numbers better than me, but I have heard rumors of snowfall totals exceeding seventy inches. That is a lot of snow even by my ex-Canadian standards. I think what really got me to thinking this was not the Reston of my work years was the picture of North Shore Drive that my daughter sent to me. It is the picture included with the post.
The picture reminds me of a Canadian woods road right through the heart of a spruce forest in the middle of the winter.
The fact that many Reston side streets are counted on as overflow parking has not helped the situation. When the snow is so great that you can hardly get through the street, street parking is pretty difficult.
Another challenge facing Reston is all those wonderful trees that usually just provide shade from summer's heat. Now they keep snow from melting. I have heard the roads are now in great shape, but the sidewalks are still missing in action.
Sidewalks are often a huge challenge even in Canada. When we lived in Halifax, you could be fined for not shoveling your sidewalks after a snow storm. I still remember the cute sidewalk cleaning miniature bulldozers that were used in Cambridge, Mass.
I guess the only consolation for those living in Reston is that most of Virginia is in the same boat with you. We just returned from a visit to our home in Roanoke. For the first time in twenty years we had to hire a truck to clean the mouth of our driveway which was clogged with snow as deep as four feet.
Roanoke was a snowy paradise, but the snow has been on the ground so long in Roanoke that it has turned into igloo snow. Even the snowy scenes in Roanoke were no match for the winter wonderland that has surrounded our friends Jack and Linda who live near Dublin.
I think the reality is that you have to head south and east of the North Carolina-Virginia border before you can escape snow. Even in North Carolina, places like Boone have seen more snow than people can remember.
On our recent trip to the coast, there were still lumps of snow in Greensboro. By the time we got to Silver City, the evidence of snow was almost gone. Often we leave Roanoke and drive to coast, and in the winter time we can see a difference of twenty or more degrees. This year the temperature difference has only averaged about ten degrees.
That ten degrees is welcome warmth, but it not near what we need to get back to our normal temperatures. Fortunately this Sunday, we just might see sixty degrees. That potential warmth is one of the reasons that I live on the Crystal Coast.
