My New Happy: 5 Reasons For A Seattle Snowpocalypse

Friday, February 22, 2019

5 Reasons For A Seattle Snowpocalypse

Happy Friday!

Recently, my friend Sarah shared 10 Reasons I Would Die In A Zombie Apocalypse.  Which made me laugh because I can totally relate.  And it also got me thinking about our recent Seattle Snowpocalypse.  Over two weeks, we got about 24 inches of snow, which is a lot for the Pacific Northwest.  First, everybody. freaked. out.  Then we completely shut down, and life as we know it ceased to exist.  I'm sure the rest of the world was laughing at us, so I thought I'd try to explain a Seattle snow event from the inside out.


First, some background.  Even though we live in the far north, Seattle is actually fairly temperate.  Because of the warming influence of the Pacific Ocean, it takes a pretty rare combination of weather events to produce snow.  And two weeks of heavy snow?  Only happens every 10-12 years.

Our weather people have no idea how to predict snow, so they just throw out a forecast and hope they're right.  Which they never are.  And if they even mention the word "flake", panic ensues.  Schools close down preemptively.  Everyone leaves work at the same time, causing gridlock.  There's a run on kale and tomatoes at the grocery store (I'm not kidding.  All the produce was gone, but there was water and bread a-plenty.  Seattleites are so weird).

In our defense, there are reasons.  Kind of. 

1/ Seattle has very little snow equipment.  Only a handful of plows, since they get used so rarely.  And forget salt, because fish and the environment.  I mean, Seattle is pretty much wrapped in a "green" blanket.  So whatever falls on the roads is staying on the roads, until the temps warm up.

2/ Nobody knows how to drive in the snow.  There are two kinds of Seattle snow drivers:  the over confident 4 wheel drive trucker, and the under confident, go five miles per hour driver.  Neither should be on the road, but there they are.  And even if a person learns winter driving skills, they're forgotten between years of no snowfall.  To be fair, Seattle drivers also can't drive in the rain.  Or in sunshine.  We just crash into each other a lot, in general.

After the first storm.  But wait, there was more!

3/ The hills.  Oh, the hills.  Everything in Seattle is on a hill.  My house is in the middle of a huge hill, so up or down it is.  The city's answer?  Put a sign at the bottom that says "road closed".  That's super helpful.


4/ The snow is wet and heavy, and compacts down to an icy hell.  The only way to stay ahead of it is with continuous shoveling.  And as mentioned above, most people don't even own a snow shovel.  We did have one, until I gave it to my son at college and forgot to buy another.  A fact which my husband may have mentioned a few times over the two weeks he removed snow with a garden shovel.  Oops.


5/  The bottom line?  We're snow wimps.  Give us days on end of a rainy 50 degrees, and we're happy.  Actually, not even then.  Come to think of it, Seattleites also complain in the summer that it's too hot.  So apparently we're just weather wimps.  During our two week snowpocalypse, there was no mail.  Garbage wasn't picked up.  Not a single day of school.  And you couldn't even buy kale or tomatoes.  The horror. 

It's all over now, mostly.  There's still a lot of snow piled up, but the roads are clear, and we're back to regular weather complaining.  Until the next flake flies.

Have a great weekend!  I'm off on a mother/son adventure with my oldest, so follow along on IG to see what we're up to.  There better not be snow where we're going!


10 comments:

  1. Have so much fun with your boy! We’d be in heaven with all that snow but I’m over the dreary now and so ready for Spring. xo

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  3. That happens here a lot too - the lack of kale and produce on the shelves - while the bread, milk and eggs stay put. It's funny because we're used to lots of snow and still - it shuts us down like a zombie takeover.
    I visited the PNW twice in my life and one was in March. I was so surprised at how different it was from the northeast. It wasn't freezing, like you said! Although why did we go in March?? I wanted to see orcas in the wild and that wasn't the time of year for them! We did see seals, though.

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  4. Oh, gosh, Lana. Your #2 had me laughing out loud! It also amuse me that there was no kale or tomatoes. Those would be languishing on the shelves where I live. During one of our hurricanes, the baked beans were wiped out, but the *vegetarian* baked beans weren't! Yeah, that little chunk of ham is important!

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  5. OMG...this was a little hilarious, Lana!! But I get it...if you aren't used to these conditions, you can't prepare for them. You or the city. I'm sure you'll never hear the end of giving away the snow shovel....it'll be a fun, family story for years to come.
    It's like we were on the same page with our blog posts for today...snow, snow and more snow.
    XOXO
    Jodie
    www.jtouchofstyle.com

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  6. I love snow on vacation but definitely know I'd never make it on the daily!

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  7. I was chicklichthe whole way through but I also know there is so much truth in this. My sister is in Victoria, BC and they experienced the same thing. The up and down hills would be extremely dangerous, paired with poor drivers and no winter tires= accident galore. Sometimes I wish in extreme we can just call it a day, but nope, we think we are invincible.

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  8. This made me smile! I always forget that even though you are north, you rarely get snow! The weather has been so extreme for everyone. Hopefully spring will be here soon!

    Jill - Doused in Pink

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  9. Using winter tires in summer leas to an increase in braking distance by about 10% on a dry road. Winter tires are much noisier.

    To here : Reasons You Need Winter Tires

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