MOSCOW — Even in Russia, the recent blizzards that have hit Washington have been noticed. Though not always sympathetically. Were Congress and other powerful institutions really closed, not to mention the schools? Did panicked residents actually strip stores of food, making the bare shelves resemble something from the Soviet era?

All because of the snow?

Russia, mindful that it trails the United States in many measures, tends to leap at any chance to promote its supremacy, and when it comes to wintry hardiness, there is, of course, no contest.

This is one cold war that Russia wins.

In their reports sent home, Russian journalists in Washington seemed to have a hard time suppressing their grins. Mikhail Solodovnikov of Russian state television did his segment wandering outside the Capitol without a hat, as if to demonstrate how positively temperate the place was. (It is practically against the law in Moscow to venture outside hatless in February.)

“Political life is dead,” Mr. Solodovnikov told his viewers. “News about the weather totally displaces news about anything else happening in the world. As if this is a tornado or a hurricane, and not just simply snow.”