Last weekend, Denis Baranov was glued to the weather channel.
Like many other District residents bracing for school closures and icy sidewalks, the 2009 GW alum was continuously monitoring the arrival of the largest blizzard in the District since 2019, which came to D.C.’s doorstep amid a cold front that froze the Midwest. But Baranov had extra incentive — as one of the co-founders of the Washington DC Snowball Fight Association, a group that organizes local snowball fights when there’s sufficient precipitation, he needed to see if the forthcoming flurries would bring enough flakes to set up winter activities.
“Running the whole thing is super easy for most of the year, and then it becomes extremely stressful in the three days coming up to the blizzard,” he said.
He said he and two other “snow elves” who run the group with him decided to hold a snowball fight last Monday in Meridian Hill Park after a perfect snowstorm Monday, where more than five inches of flakes fell onto various parts of D.C. The duel attracted at least 500 winter warriors, from adults taking an extra long lunch break to toddlers watching on the sidelines. One black and white canine competitor even joined the action.
“Somebody brought their Border Collie, and it was like a circle of people around the dog, and they were throwing snowballs, and the dog was trying to catch them from the air,” he said. “People started lightly tossing snowballs for the dog to catch.”
Under the shadow of drab office buildings and leafless trees, Monday’s snowball fight saw more snow dashing through the air than during even the most intense winter storms. Some participants were forced to craft their battle tools one-handed as they used their other palm to film the action. One group of snowball fighters interested in self-preservation hid behind neon green and yellow sleds, so they weren’t directly in the line of fire.
Baranov said there’s a sweet spot a snowstorm has to strike to be suitable for a snowball fight, which he said tends to happen no more than twice per winter — at least four inches of snow that’s neither too soggy nor flaky.
“There needs to be enough snow on the ground for people to throw it, but at the same time, the temperatures also need to be within a certain range so that the snow is not too wet when it’s getting too heavy, or if the temperature is too low, then snow gets powdery, and there’s just no way to make a snowball that actually reaches at least something,” he said.

Baranov said planning snowball fights can start as soon as the night before if conditions come together at the last minute, with the association posting all planning information on Facebook. He said they prioritize picking times when most people will be off work, like a lunch break, and hold the events in public places like the National Mall and Dupont Circle.
Baranov said his involvement in facilitating the District’s most dramatic snow duels dates back to 2009, after he graduated GW, when a massive blizzard hit the District right before Christmas. He said he and a group of friends went down to the National Mall to have a small-scale flaky fight.
Two months later, when two snowstorms hit D.C. in a single week in a torrent of flurries Baranov called “Snowzilla,” their plans quite literally snowballed. He said his friends advertised through a Facebook event to promote a snowball fight in Dupont Circle, and thousands flocked to the snowy skirmish. He said bar owners were also pleased about the snowball fight, as it gave them a rush of customers during the otherwise shivery times.
“Everybody was throwing snowballs, going to the local bars to get a cup of coffee or something with a little more power to get the blood going and then go back out into the snow,” he said.
Baranov said that in 2010 the association held a showdown at the Dupont Circle fountain between a group of snowballers who called themselves the Defenders of the Fountain and another group fighting against the fountain, where “a bunch of really adventurous dudes” perched atop the fountain and hurled snowballs against their opponents.
“They had so much ammo, like we call it, so with the fresh snow that they could pack and throw back,” he said. “And then they would be catching snowballs that people were throwing at them and just throwing them back.”
Baranov said that during the next snowball fight “season” in 2010 to 2011, he and his friends set up a formal Facebook page for their association, and the rest is a snow-filled history. He said he and his friends settled on the name “Washington DC Snowball Fight Association” as a way to embrace being part of the “unserious” side of the District.
“The whole name of DC Snowball Fight Association is poking fun at the seriousness of the city,” he said.

Baranov said he’s continued leading the group for more than a decade because of the adrenaline rush he gets in the lead-up to a snowstorm, desperately organizing people and precipitation-based projectiles alike.
He said snowball fights have become a part of his “identity” to other Washingtonians.
“People have seen me on TV doing interviews and are like ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know you did this,’” Baranov said.
Baranov said his heart wasn’t warmed by another random organizer setting up a snowball fight for that same day by the Capitol because no one knew the extent of the security surrounding the building as Congress certified the 2024 election results.
“That was a really odd choice,” he said.
Ericka Hume, a digital production assistant based in Ward 1, said she attended her first D.C. snowball fight Monday to take advantage of the storm after seeing online postings about the scheduled duel. She said the fight was “absolute chaos” and, though it was her first winter wrangle, she said she managed to whack someone with a mound of powder.
“I threw exactly one snowball and it hit someone in the chest, so I consider that a personal victory,” Hume said in an email.
Hume said there were teams in the east and west of the park, plus a “snowman’s land” in the middle where no one was safe from the onslaught of snowballs — including journalists filming the action.
“I saw a snowball directly hit a television camera, which made me a bit nervous as a photographer but I hoped made for a great bit of footage,” she said.