Does crime follow the weather report?

Maybe people steal what they need.

Two days before Washington's first snowfall -- when the media were going nuts about the impending flakes -- the weekly crime report told of the theft of this item from a house on West Glen Drive in the McLean area of Fairfax County: A snow blower.

That same report said not a word about leaf blowers. But only a week before, with temperatures hoveriing in the 60s, police in a single jurisdiction -- Vienna -- reported the theft of three leaf blowers.

Is it possible that cleaning up leaves has given way to clearing the snow, by the law abiding and lawless alike?

-- Martin Weil