Coping with the snow

Everyone copes with the snow in his or her own way.

Just before D.C. schools dismissed students early on Friday, students from Brightwood Elementary used their backpacks to sled down the large hill at the back of the Northwest school. They squealed and shrieked all the way down as the storm's first snowflakes fluttered around them.

Not far away, John Weiss, 31, carefully spread out two bright blue camping tarps over his front steps on Buchanan Street NW, copying the snow-coping method of his neighbors on either side of him.

Weiss said he didn't put out his tarps for the big snowstorm in December. He had spent about 20 minutes digging out from that storm and was boned-tired, then he saw his neighbor pick up a tarp from his yard and flick off all the snow.

"I saw that and thought, hmm, there's a way to work smarter instead of harder," said Weiss, who is working on the 2010 Census for a Maryland technology company.

So with his anchors in place -- a gallon of windshield wiper fluid on one tarp edge and a half-gallon of water in an empty milk jug on the other tarp edge -- Weiss said he was eager to see how the impending snowfall would test his effort.

"But this with this much," he laughed, "it may not even matter."

--Theola Labbe-DeBose