Thursday, December 18, 2008

MatterSnowDayPics

Seattle closed it's schools yesterday due to the threat of snow. How embarrassing. It snowed up north, and down south, and to the east - but not a single flake in Seattle.

Today, however, we got our snow. As the front moved into the city around 5 a.m., there was lightning and thunder that shook the house and rumbled for a long, LONG time. Not just rumbled ... it sounded like something hitting, exploding, and screeching. We seriously thought it was meteors hitting the earth or a plane going down. So, I was wide awake after that.

There was about 3 inches of snow in our neighborhood, and it looked soft and fluffy and white. So I brushed off Joe Jetta and maneuvered out of our neighborhood - to roads that were solid ice, covered with snow.

Now, I only work a couple of miles from home, so I drive on surface streets the whole way. Which hadn't been sanded or plowed by the three snowplows that Seattle owns (and two are in the shop). I quickly realized that it was really dangerous (and dumb) to be out driving on the steep hills here. (Sizzle will have some idea of how I nearly pissed myself trying to manuever down Denny Way from Olive Street, towards I-5).

Made it to work - almost an hour later. The snow was supposed to end by 10 a.m. or so. They announced that our office would close at 3:00 p.m., before the worst of rush hour. But the snow didn't stop. I felt like I was in a snow globe.

I left work at about 1:45, realizing that the snow wasn't ending, it was getting colder, and my short commute up very steep hills was likely to be disastrous if I waited much longer. I (slowly) drove through a pretty scarce downtown (empty except for the many people standing at bus stops for buses that wouldn't be coming for a long, long time) and took a LONG way home that wasn't quite as steep. My neighborhood was buried in about 6-7 inches of snow (yes, this is a big thing to us who live in ultra-hilly Seattle, people!). And it continued to snow. Very, very pretty - but I'm not looking forward to tomorrow morning's commute ...

On to the pretty pictures:



The parking lot accross from my office, about 9:00:





The pretty trees by REI, across the other street:


Looking towards Capitol Hill, around 11:00:


Driving by the King County Courthouse, around 2:00 (I know, the snow doesn't look like much, but the HILLS ... ):


Getting into my neck of the woods in the Central District, with 23rd Avenue being a packed-down icy mess:




Snow at the Quincy Jones Performance Center, part of Garfield High School, three blocks from our house:

Our street, snowy:




Planters that were moved to our upper deck - also snowy:

The backyard from the kitchen door:

I hope y'all are warm, safe and dry!

9 comments:

A Lewis said...

Warm and safe and happy holiday thoughts to you guys....you've got it a little worse than we do! Amazing, isn't it?

Dave2 said...

Of course, at it's peak, the snowfall is dumping that on us in the East Cascades every hour. :-)

Sizzle said...

You drove WHERE!? You are nuts! People are skidding and backsliding on my piddly little hilly street so to think about facing Denny? Forget it! I just pissed myself thinking about it.

They closed my office today and I hope the same for tomorrow. Though, I will probably have to go into work at some point next week to finish up stuff before my 2 wk break.

Stay warm! Stay away from the road!

Darth Gateau said...

sigh. I miss snow. I miss trees - well, ones that don't drop dates or coconuts anyway.

I see a busy desert city from my windows. This place never grinds to a halt. Except at Ramadan.

Anonymous said...

Don't you guys (in Seattle) go all snow-tire on a certain date like they do and hour north?

Anonymous said...

dammit.
and = an

Matt said...

Mike - it really doesn't snow very often in Seattle, and when it does it's usually an inch at best and melts in a few hours. People have tire chains to go up over the mountain passes, but a big long-lasting snow and ice storm here is rare!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I'm thinking you don't miss Chicago as much now, do you? :-)

Rick said...

The snow looks great! I'm jealous. All your pics and the tree look wonderful as well.
Merry Christmas!