WASHINGTON--Even by Chicago standards, the record snowfall here is a lot. Some are calling this Snowmageddon 2010. Washingtonians have real snow and ice worries. I can't open my kitchen door because the drifts are more than three feet high. I worried that the snow would crush my flat roof.

Two back-to-back blizzards this past week brought the total snowfall so far this winter to 55.9 inches, as measured at Reagan National Airport, the most in 121-years. Now, that's worth complaining about. Usually this place shuts down just on the prediction of snow, with President Obama much amused during his first year in the White House at the contrast between coping Chicagoans and Washingtonians freaked out by an inch of powder.

We Illinoisans accept snow is part of our lives and presume we will dig out of it sooner than later. In Washington--where it snows almost every year, so this is not a surprise--the presumption is reversed, with the recovery from a snowfall--record or otherwise--later than sooner.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who first lived in Washington as a college student in 1963, took to the Senate floor on Thursday to marvel how this city deals with snow.