Someone at the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority thought that Hurricane Isabel was going to cause trouble for the outside platforms and bus stops, so they quit running public transport in the District at 11am. That meant the Federal Government decided to close for the day, as a large segment of that workforce rides Metro (approximately 1.1 million rides a day). Since the Federal Government shut down, my employer (as a standing policy) has cancelled work for the day.

Which is to say, thanks to our litigious society (one of the main reasons to shut down Metro was because of fears that someone might be blown from a platform or the winds might derail an outside train), I get a holiday! Jill's employer closed at 11am, likely to enable those who hadn't heard about Metro's closing to make it home.

It's about 1:30pm, and the rain started thirty minutes ago. The wind's only 5-10mph at the moment. Weather report says the worst will be overnight for us, while the rain and winds will really start picking up at 4pm. For the record, I think people have been overreacting in this town, but I'm prepared to have that proved wrong.

As a final aside, Jill and I have lived in the District for five years and never suffered a prolonged power outage. Jill's co-worker put forward a reasonable explanation: many of the members of congress live in the District, not to mention your executive branch. The power companies know better than to have an outage to the people who might thing their ineptitude in managing the grid is reason for re-regulation.