Thursday, January 11, 2007

Snow!

Sunday and Monday the news reports had a dire warning... we were going to get a big rainstorm, followed by a big windstorm as a cold front moved in on Tuesday night. Overnight, the rain would turn into snow, and by Wednesday morning we'd be living in a winter wonderland.

Tuesday afternoon the rainstorm moved in as predicted. Not a heavy one, though. Pretty mild. As the night wore on, the windstorm came in. Again, nothing special. But we prepared for power outages and school closures. Wednesday morning, my teacher husband got up to check the reports and the weather. One look outside told him there would be school. We'd gotten a very light dusting, nothing else. So much for the storm.

The day glowered. When I went out to pick up the Wednesday comics, there were snow flurries that quickly went away. As the afternoon wore on, the area prepared for a deep freeze with no more snow.

Ha.

About 4pm it started to snow. I mean really snow. The stuff was coming down so hard in my area that I literally couldn't see the house across the street. Remembering the last nightmare commute (when I called hubby-Eric's evening job and suggested everyone get home, only to have it take Eric two hours to travel four miles home (and another guy took 8 hours to get home!)) I called Eric's job and urged them to let people go home. As it turned out, most of the students weren't showing up because everyone else remembered the last snow and didn't want to get stuck in it. So Eric got home a bit early. It only took him 45 minutes to drive the wild trip home, since the roads hadn't quite frozen yet.

Later in the evening, Eric checked SchoolReport.org and discovered that both his districts were already canceled. With a reported nine inches of snow on the Sammamish Plateau I'm not surprised that the Lake Washington District was canceled, but I was a little shocked at Northshore canceling so early. It looked like we'd only gotten maybe an inch, and the street in front of our house didn't look too bad.

But they were wise. It snowed a bit more overnight, after the freeze had settled in, and the roads look really nasty this morning. So hubby-Eric got to sleep in, and will hopefully make me breakfast in a bit. Most natives of the area will stay home today unless they must travel, so those who do go out probably won't have as bad a time (knock on wood). I plan on staying home and trying to get my comic book order prepared. I think it's due Saturday.

I stepped outside to get some pictures. Very cold, and the sky is absolutely clear, not a cloud in sight.

Snow Snow
Snow

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