It’s been said (like right now) that when Washington, D.C., gets a cold, folks in the federal building in balmy San Diego and humid Miami sneeze. Translation: What happens here often shapes what happens in your office, even if it’s 2,000 miles away.

Which brings us to winter.

If you haven’t had much winter — as in cold, ice and snow — yet, this may be the week that was. December was snowless inside the Beltway, but we’re looking at 1 to 2 inches today. That would be a dusting in Buffalo or Boise or Boston, but here it is trouble for the 1.7 million who commute — mostly via car — to work. Even if they are transplants from Minneapolis, Chicago or Ogden where people know how to drive in ice and snow. Until they get here!

Normally, D.C., gets about 15 inches of snow per year. Last year, we got 30, and just to the west (Dulles airport) the total was 50 inches. Some parts of western Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia got up to 80 inches.

Many forecasters (using government data) are predicting this winter will be the same, or worse, than last year in this area. NBC-WRC’s Storm Team is predicting 18 to 25 inches, or maybe even more.

The winter of 2011 gave us back-to-back snowstorms, including one 33 inch dump that pretty much shut things down here. It also resulted in revisions of the government’s closure policy. For the first time, tens of thousands of workers who would telework from home were told to stay on the job — assuming they had electricity — while their nonteleworking colleagues got time off. Emergency workers (the number keeps growing) were and are expected in no matter what.

What happens here has a ripple effect on the rest of the government. Although local agency heads and Federal Executive Boards can make emergency calls, many wait to see what D.C. is doing. Baltimore is a good example. Although just up the road from Washington, it has a slightly colder, more snowy, clime. It also has lots of federal workers, including a huge concentration at Social Security’s Woodlawn facility. It has in the past deviated from the master plan in Washington. Once employees got the day off after Thanksgiving while other federal agencies spluttered. But generally it, like other federal population centers, tends to follow the D.C. line,.

So what to expect if we get a very rough winter? Very likely: More snow days, more people working from home. While a government shut down here opens Uncle Sam up to ribbing from rugged editorial writers in Fargo and TV news anchors in Duluth, closing the government, and schools, is a blessing for feds (and the rest of us) who have to work. It also likely saves lives each time it happens meaning the only real losers during a government shutdown are two truck drivers and people who own auto body repair shops! Welcome to winter.

NEARLY USELESS FACTOID:

Compiled by Michael O’Connell

Residents from the town of Bethel, Maine, constructed the world’s tallest snowman — actually a snow woman — over a period of one month. When the snow woman was finished on Feb. 26, 2008, she stood 122 feet and 1 inches tall.

Source: Guinness World Records

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