While Washington's sequestration woes haven't shut down the government, it looks like a forecast of a heavy bout of snow did.
Winter Storm Saturn, playfully dubbed the "snowquester," left Washington at a standstill Wednesday with school and federal office closures, and cancellations tracking from the White House to the Hill. Congress called off 13 scheduled hearings (one of which happened to be the Committee on Science, Space and Technology's hearing on climate change). The White House left the press corps in the cold by canceling the daily briefing.
The initial results of the snow storm were underwhelming after little of the expected 4 to 8 inches of snow actually stuck to the ground. Areas directly outside of the Beltway were harder hit. NBC News reported as much as two feet of snow in suburban areas and more than 126,000 power outages across the eastern seaboard.