The snow-sticking of Washington has begun: NBC4 reporter Tommy McFly has set up a “SNOWdio” in Northwest DC on Monday, at the site where local news legend Pat Collins famously used a yardstick to demonstrate to TV viewers how much snow had fallen.
McFly and a camera operator named Jake are posted up at a BP station at Connecticut Avenue and Fessenden Street, Northwest, where Collins, who began measuring snow on air in the ’80s, spent 2010’s Snowmageddon snow-sticking and bantering with passersby.
Planning for the event began early, McFly says by phone from the location. “You have to have stick-able snow,” he says. “You can’t just do it willy-nilly.” NBC4 could have dispatched McFly to the National Mall, or to Meridian Hill Park, where a big snowball fight is planned. But with Collins’s blessing, McFly says, the station decided the gas station in Forest Hills was the correct spot. “The snow stick belongs at Connecticut and Fessenden,” McFly says.
McFly, who took temporary custody of the stick last January, and Jake have set up around a four-top table that’s a popular spot for neighbors in easier weather. They’ve festooned it with an inflatable football and inflatable goal posts to celebrate the Washington Commanders’ victory over Dallas Sunday (and perhaps a reminder that this coming Sunday night’s playoff game between the Commanders and Tampa Bay will air on NBC4 at 8 PM).
Monday’s location is a “two-stick event,” McFly says. One commemorative snow stick will be awarded to the person who correctly predicted the time the first inch of snow would fall at National Airport. They’ll give out another to the person who submits the best “Victory Monday” video of people demonstrating excitement about Sunday’s wild win or the upcoming playoffs.
Of course, that’s not all. A prototype of chief meteorologist Doug Kammerer’s “snow globe” will be unveiled at Connecticut and Fessenden today, and anyone who is able to make it down is welcome to join McFly. (Mayor Bowser may drop by, he says.) A neighbor named Maurice has already brought McFly and Jake some peppermint cocoa and a young girl provided an on-air measurement that wasn’t entirely accurate (11 inches).
How is our person on the spot staying warm? Layers. Lots of layers. Boots that date to Snowmageddon. Sweatpants. Ski pants. Two layers of thermals. All packed beneath a too-small NBC4 coat that was the last one in the station’s closet. Tommy, we have to know: How can you move under all that fabric? “It’s snow stick magic,” he says.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
