2500 feet finds us tunneling through a solid mass of fog and rain. We are lit up like a Christmas tree and due to the temperature the precipitation captured in the beams of the landing lights is a mix of rain and ice. The FO turned on the engine and wing anti ice system several minutes ago and I am comforted by the green flow lines depicted on the multi function display, showing hot air being carried to the leading edge of the wing and engine cowls. Somewhere below us the sluggish waters of the Potomac River are sliding by, hidden by the clouds and darkness.

Despite the weather the ride has been mostly smooth unlike earlier in the day when we bounced through the clouds on our way into Charlotte. And into Greenville, SC. And back into Charlotte. And down to Columbia, SC. I shake my head slightly and realize that out of 5 legs flown today, at no time have we seen the ground above 1000 feet, something all too typical of late Fall/early Winter in the North East.

At 2000 feet off the ground there still isn’t anything to see forward except a hypnotizing pattern of rain and snow that is blasting by the window. A mile back tower advised us to slow down as much as we could as we were getting too close to the airplane in front of us to allow a departure between their arrival and ours. We’ve slowed down but with 25 knots of wind pushing us along towards the runway there may still not be enough room. Behind us, the next airplane in line (a Mesaba CRJ 900) is throwing out their anchor in an effort to slow down as well.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a blur of lights and look straight downward out the left side window. A string of white headlights emerges out of the fog, stretching off into the distance before it drifts out of sight behind the wing. I take a second to get my bearings and realize I’m watching Beltway traffic cross the Potomac on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. By now the lights are a faint memory and all that’s left is the momentary blur of raindrops, briefly illuminated by our flashing strobe light and beacon.

The gray darkness ahead starts to lighten and then lift as the ground lights come into sight. The runway approach lights are turned off but visibility is reported as 10 miles below the overcast so just the runway edge lights are more than enough. On the far side of the airport, on the other side of the bend in the Potomac and across the Mall, the headlights on 14th St stretch northward. Going from seeing nothing to the entirety of The District laid out in front of us in just seconds is a bit of a shock but fortunately the runway rushing towards us at 175mph forces us to focus on the task at hand.

The pavement starts just after the river ends and despite the steady rain and not so steady crosswind the FO manages a soft touchdown. We slow and turn off the runway. Behind us an American 737 starts accelerating down the runway we just vacated, it’s landing lights flickering behind the spray of water its engines are kicking up. Behind them, rapidly approaching down the river are the lights of the CRJ that was behind us. DC runs things tight, but as the lights quickly settle towards the ground, and the still accelerating 737 I realize they set this one up too tight. Sure enough ATC tells the arriving Mesaba jet to go around and their lights rotate upwards and within seconds they disappear back into the clouds.

The drama over I switch to “driving” mode in my mind and start looking for the line that will lead us to our rain swept parking space.

We are blasting our way eastward through the still morning air with the FO driving. I am splitting my attention between watching the slowly shrinking pattern of ground lighting below us and the healthy climb rate the instrumentation is showing. I’m also working the radios but at this early hour there isn’t much happening on that front. Razorback Departure hands us over to Memphis Center and after a brief conversation with the controller sitting in a room a hundred miles away, a room about as dark as the cockpit I’m currently in, I go back to looking out the window.

Our 5:35am departure out of Fayetteville, Arkansas made us the first flight to call the tower ready to go. FedEx and UPS had long since headed off to Memphis and Louisville and at the gates other Express aircraft for United, Delta and American were starting to load up to go but we had the taxiway and runway to ourselves. The plane, lightly loaded, was straining skyward by 130 knots and at 145 knots the FO pulled her off the ground and into the dark sky.

The lights of Fayetteville have disappeared behind the wing. To the north Memphis is clearly illuminated despite the early hour. 200 miles off our nose, just over the horizon Nashville is waking up to another day. 25 minutes from now, when we pass over at 33,000 feet the roads will be filled with the start of the morning commute and the first bank of departures will have already taken off from the airport. As we level off, almost 5 miles above the earth, the eastern skyline starts to turn from deep black to dark blue.

The ride is smooth and I turn off the seatbelt sign. I’m guessing most of our 20 odd passengers are sleeping but this way they can get up and move about it they want. With my seat pushed all the way back I stretch my legs out but my toes bump the rudder pedals. The CRJ cockpit was not designed for comfort or calisthenics, although apparently it is much better than some other airplanes flying around out there.

My abbreviated stretching session completed I go back to watching the horizon which is now a light blue with a line of pale yellow starting to show at the bottom. I take a second to dig around in my flight case to find my sunglasses. When the sun comes up, it tends to come up quickly and it helps to have things in place ready to go. The horizon is still uniform in color so it’s hard to tell where exactly the sun will pop up but I take an educated case and place the tinted sun visor on the overhead rail and slide it to where I think the curving disk of the sun will rise in a few minutes.

The horizon is now a pale gold color which stretches upwards 15 or 20 degrees. There is a perceptible switch in the intensity of the light and within the space of a minute the bottom edge of the horizon line goes from gold to orange to red and then the top of the sun, glowing brightly, clears the curve of the earth and daybreak comes as we cross over the top of Nashville. 400 miles away the sun is high in the sky over Charlotte where another day has already started.