Winter in DC sneaks up on you.
All day yesterday the weather reports threatened a snowstorm which was predicted to shut down the DC area. As a former resident of Pittsburgh, my attitude toward such things consists of "I'll believe it when I see it," carefully enculturated through years of school delays and cancellations due to snowstorms which never seemed to materialize. The snow started coming down late last night, and around 0130 this I was awakened by the sirens of a pair of UPSes in the office signalling loss of power. As near as I can tell, ice forming on the wires knocked out power to my particular region of the apartment complex, which also took out, among other things, the furnace. I threw another couple of blankets on the bed, powered the servers in the office down to stop the racket, called the power company to report the outage, and tried to get back to sleep the rest of the night.
Somehow, I just couldn't. When every last familiar sound that you normally fall asleep to is no longer there - no exhaust fans, no buzzing of power lines or fluorescent lights, no air conditioning, not even the compressor in the fridge - the world is a very different place when you can't see it. Plus, I was worrying about other stuff, like how would I get a hot shower in the morning, could I make it to the dentist's office this morning (I wasn't able to, for the record), and a host of other things that normally don't even register.
Anyway, I nearly found out the hard way that I wasn't going to get anywhere safely today so as I picked my way back to my apartment I snapped a couple of pictures on the way in. 
Why do I take so many pictures of snow? I think it's pretty, and I'm more inclined to stop and snap a few pictures of it than anything else because I'm more inclined to be at home when it snows.