"It's Snowing Like Hell in Washington"

The story goes that when Jule Gregory Charney, at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, ran an early numerical weather prediction in 1953, he and his colleagues managed to correctly hindcast a big snowstorm that had hit Washington, D.C., the previous year (fooling forecasters at the time). The quotation above is what Charney apparently said in a late night call to Harry Wexler, research director of the U.S. Weather Bureau. The moment has come to be regarded as a kind of turning point in meteorological history. I couldn't help thinking of those words as our first snowfall--or at least, the first to which I've been a witness this winter--arrived in D.C. less than an hour ago. I've been living here 5 years now, and I don't remember a year in which the first snow came so late. Neither do I remember anything analogous to the seriously balmy days that have preceded ...