I'm not as bad of a blogger as I thought. In the 3.42 years I've had this blog I've managed to wish you all, my loyal readers, a Merry Christmas: 2005, 2006, 2007. And much like 2006, I have nothing better to talk about than the weather. In fact, I'm not sure what the fine citizens of the Seattle area would do without the weather to talk about. Not that I am mocking them in any way.
So Merry Christmas! For everyone I updated my last post to include my teammates (yes, I have teammates) and will now go on to talk about the weather. Yep, I'm a freaking Santa,
The snow started falling Sunday December 14. Not much fell. Our cat Donny was the only one who wanted to play in it, and by play I mean "try to run as fast as he can to get his paws out of the snow "
Scoping it out:
Then that Wednesday a big storm was supposed to hit, but Seattle was in some sort of 'snow cone' so instead we got rain, all surrounding areas got snow, and our snow melted.
[no photo, as if this post isn't boring enough]
Finally on Thursday we got our snow! And as is the case in Seattle, no one can go anywhere because we are all too afraid to drive in it. Given the terrian and information later in my post, I don't blame them. Will and I luckily can both work from home. Yay, well, sort of.Not working, but walking to the park:
The park and frozen pond:
Since the weather people were completely wrong about Wednesday's storm, I didn't heed their weekend warning and figured I could wait until Friday to send out my Christmas packages and "cards". So when the snow kept falling and the temperature kept dropping I knew I screwed up (note: if you did get something from me and it arrived on time, you can thank Will for busing it to the post office on Thursday, unfortunatley I didn't have many addresses on hand nor many presents wrapped so I got a grand total of three "cards" sent).
We got somewhat of a break on Friday. It didn't snow, but the high was below freezing and not much was melting off the road. Day 2 of the confinement by snow.
On Saturday I was desperate to get some gifts mailed so I braved the icy roads to get to the post office (note: if you got something from me sent the 20th you can thank my sense of adventure or stupidity, depending on the perspective).
That night it began to snow, then snow, then snow, [Enter Sunday] then snow, then snow... pretty much a foot of it, which is quite unheard of in Seattle, and it was light an fluffy to boot! It was deep enough that Will got out the old cross country skis and skied the bike trail. I would have joined him but I slept until 10 instead. Oh do I value my sleep. Anyway I'm veering off topic
Below is the Burke Gilman trail which I spoke of in this post. See, I told you I would post a picture of it:
All the while the temperature didn't rise above freezing, so here are more snow pics on Monday.
Will heading out to the trail again. I'm not sure why I didn't go with him this time. Since cross country skiing is a much better form of exercising than shoveling. I must have really wanted those truffles:
Our neighbors shoveling our shared driveway:
Now for the complaining...
Yep, just like the driveway. I know it's there, but where?Snow storms are rare, so Seattle has a whopping 24 snowplows to cover the entire area. Since they cannot possibly help us all out they focus on the arterials (in English: main roads). That doesn't help when you are half a mile from an arterial but have to drive down a steep, snowy and icy downgrade. It also doesn't help when you are .2 miles from another arterial and have to make it up a very steep snowy and icy upgrade to get there. Even if you can get to an arterial here is Seattle's, or more appropriately, Mayor Nickles' way of dealing with that: Seattle refuses to use salt; roads "snow packed" by design. Although I can sum it up with these quotes:
The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains.
The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt...
That leaves many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until nature does to the snow what the sand can't: melt it.
And to help us all sleep at night:
The city's patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even with tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding on foot...
Alright I'm done with the complaining...Finally we got some relief on Tuesday. The roads were still crap, but the city was above freezing, and there was no further accumulation. We still couldn't drive, but Will was able to get to work and I was able to go to the store. These were both great accomplishments.
A ghost town AKA Microsoft around late December:
The question now is, if I was stuck inside for days why didn't I catch up on emails/facebook/other blogs or post anything until now...oh the mystery.
