Seattle "Weather"

Last week we had our annual snow panic, wherein Seattle and surrounding areas completely shut down for two days because of a light dusting of snow. This might be the only place in the country where they announce school closures the night before any snow has even fallen. Despite this annual frenzy, the city has virtually no infrastructure in place to handle a modest size patch of snow.

Having grown up in Colorado this seems like laughable nonsense. The first “snow day” I experienced here, I got up, scraped the snow off the car, and drove into work as normal. On my drive in I passed several abandoned cars along the roadside, whose passengers had either pulled over and fled in sheer terror, or had gotten stuck after veering off of the road. One SUV was actually balancing precipitously on top of the guard rail. When I got to work hardly anyone else showed up that day. All this because of a few inches of snow, most of which melted off by noon.

This region has absolutely no perspective in matters of weather. In 2000, when I first moved here, we had what they classified as a “drought” because during the winter it only rained two or three times a week instead of the usual four or five. That evokes the same kind of sympathy as someone saying they’re “starving” because they skipped breakfast. Only in this case they weren’t using hyperbole. The governor actually declared it a drought.

There’s definitely no chance of a “drought” this year. November turned out to be one of the wettest months on record. It was during this time that I discovered that the musty stink that my car had developed was being caused by a leak in the trunk. I had taken on a few gallons of water in the spare tire’s wheel well. I'm still trying to figure out how to stop the leak, and every few days I bail the water out of the trunk.

I complain, but it hasn’t been all bad. One night last week as it was snowing, there was a flash of lightning and a loud crack of thunder. Snow with lightning is quite a spectacle, and something I didn’t even know was possible.

So maybe I'm not fit to judge “normal” weather, or how people respond to it.