Photo by Joseph Gruber
Not only does lumping Maryland and Virginia with D.C. make for a terrible acronym (the “DMV”), it’s also apparently bad for the city’s weather preparedness.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote to the National Weather Service earlier this week requesting that it change its official D.C. snowfall-measuring site from Ronald Reagan National Airport to somewhere in D.C. proper.
“The airport is not located in the District and the snowfall amounts do not always reflect the actual snowfall within the District,” Norton said. In fact, she continued, almost all of D.C. gets more snow than the Arlington site.
Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen brought the snow-measuring issue to public attention at a recent D.C. Council hearing on weather preparedness. A NWS meteorologist agreed, but said that finding resources to staff another site 24/7 would be a challenge, the Washington Post reported.
The airport is “going to be the lowest [in terms of snowfall totals], pretty much all the time. Maybe it’s going to be close to what’s at the Mall, but 90 percent of D.C. gets more [snow] than DCA,” the Capital Weather Gang’s Matt Ross testified at the hearing.
Accurately measuring the snowfall total within the city is critical for applying for federal disaster aid and weather preparedness and weather response, Holmes Norton said today. During the massive snow storm earlier this year, the city had to apply for financial relief using unofficial snow measurements from Dalecarlia Reservoir, a storage basin that sits between Spring Valley and the Palisades.
In addition, moving the location “is a home-rule matter of respect for D.C. and its local residents,” she said.
Snow totals for D.C. have been recorded at the airport since 1941, according WTOP. Before that, observations were taken at locations in Georgetown and near the White House.
Norton suggests bringing the site back to the White House or to other locations such the U.S. Naval Observatory, the National Arboretum, or Dalecarlia Reservoir.
She requested that NWS respond with a plan in the next 30 days.
