via cliff mass
As an amusing aside, it looks certain that we will break a major record tomorrow…the latest in the season that the Sea-Tac maximum temperature has not hit 75F! The record is June 9…and there is virtually no chance we will get that high tomorrow.
amusing.
i can’t live here much longer.
everybody who lives here is a wasted life.
they all convince themselves that it’s nice, but they’re just better at fooling themselves than i am. and i’ve tried.
you’re protesting, but you hear that voice in your head that tells you that seattle just sucks all the life and soul out of you.
when you travel to other places there’s so much more of a care free attitude toward life that comes with being able to wear short sleeves every so often.
but here your soul just gets sucked away as your mind becomes a sanitarium of circuitous pathways inverting reality and convincing you that your life is worth living.
it’s not.
if i still live here in five years, kill me, because i’ll already be dead inside, my soul having long since been sucked into nothingness, smothered by the vast sea of despair that is seattle.
we should have left it to canada. then maybe i’d still have a desire to live.
That’s the best way to describe it.
On second thought, given the local statistics, it really is more jump off a bridge weather.
Still, I’d prefer some light and heat at the end.
Now, it was an historically mild winter here, I’ll give you that. However, there’s still no excuse for, in the first few days of April, however cool they might be, me hearing questions about “what happened to spring?” from passersby and reading idiocy like this from the local press.
Ah, spring!
We went to bed last night with the slight threat of some snowflakes in Seattle and woke Friday morning to a continuing winter storm warning in the Cascades.
…
What in the name of tulips and daffodils is going on?
Gasp! [Never-]snow in April? Oh my god, this is just CRAAAZY! Please, somebody, provide me with some reason and sense of perspective.
“Every once in a while we can get snow in the lowlands in April,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Michalski said.
Every once in a while? Can we get even more reasonable than that in this oh-so-poorly organized tripe?
Records show April snowfall is nothing new in Puget Sound.
Ah, there we go. Now, why are we writing this article again?
On April 8, 2008, the State Patrol warned students leaving on spring break vacations to prepare for winter driving conditions when crossing the passes. The day before, about three inches of snow fell on the Cascades and the weekend before avalanches on westbound lanes of Interstate 90 caused a 10-mile backup.
Snow continued until mid April of that year….
This is what it’s come to folks. People are running around screaming about the cold spring and (oh my god) never-snow in early April and two years ago we had it in mid-April. Stop. The. Presses.
Here’s the kicker, though. Here’s where everything comes full circle and I’m left screaming at the stupidity of all that surrounds me. This is the part that sums up my entire relationship between Seattlites and their relationship with weather.
April 17, 1972, saw the latest snowfall in recorded Seattle history, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologists at the time said it wasn’t unusual, even though a P-I account shows the large snowflakes that fell in North Seattle made one person drive with snow tires.
Okay, there are two problems with that paragraph. First is that the ‘even though’ shouldn’t be an ‘even though’ as the sentence doesn’t even make sense with it in there. It should be something more like ‘and’. I mean, what does the commonality of never-snow in mid-April have to do with the never-snow being so severe that they put on never-snow tires?
But looking past that (and oh my god this is a horribly written article), here’s how this article goes if you haven’t been keeping track:
God I hate stupid. And this is stupid.
No matter how busy I get with baby prep (currently I’m trying to bank hours on my contract so I can take some time off and spending any extra time working on his/her welcome-to-our-home-this-is-what-you-will-like mix CD), one topic that will break my writing fast is never-snow.
You’d never-know there was never-snow this year, with our 10-to-20-degrees-above-average season, but Beckers comes through with a report of number two on the season, this time just north of the airport (which is south of the city) on I-5 and also in the suburb of Kent.
Cliff Mass, in his usual exhaustingly breathless style, reports in as well.
It has been an incredibly mild faltering. We’ve had a few wind storms, hardly any never-snow, and much warmer temperatures then normal. In fact, it was the warmest January on record in Seattle.
It’s been nice, that’s for sure, in terms of driving conditions, general comfort, and the gas bill. The cloud contained in this silver lining, though? These warm temps, while nice in January, are more typical, not of February or March, but April. Meaning I have a lot of crappy Aprils to look forward to.
The really crazy part about it, though, comes at the end of that blog post.
Today while walking through the UW campus I was surprised to see a number of the cherry trees in blossom and many daffodils in full flower.
I’m not even sure I believe it since I haven’t seen it myself. The last three years those trees haven’t reached bloom until spring break, which is the last week of March. This puts them two months ahead of schedule, which is just plain eerie. Though I have noticed some bushes blooming around here several weeks ahead of schedule. Still…two months? Might faltering end early this year? I won’t get my hopes up.
Clear as a bell and cold the last week-and-a-half. I love it. Feels like winter.
Reset your counters, because on Friday Beckers reported never-snow deposits on cars in Shoreline. For those out-of-town readers, Shoreline is a suburb about 15-minutes-with-no-traffic north of downtown Seattle, which puts it well within the Seattle metro area, and, heck, since Beckers commutes there for work the Shoreline weather affects a significant portion of MPL’s readership, so we’re counting it. Never-snow season is here…maybe a week or two early, but pretty much right on time.
Yeah, it’s November, which means two out of every three days feature cold temperatures, 30 mph winds gusting to 50 mph all night and day, hour after hour after hour of steady, cold rain, and just a few hours of “daylight.” It’s a joy. I doubt I’ll make it through tonight or tomorrow with electricity, and when the storm season started last week, I saw this fun report in the paper last Sunday, November 8th.
The forecast calls for another wet, windy storm late tonight through Monday, with gusts up to 50 mph.
…
That translated into up to 1 ½ inches of rain over 48 hours and high wind gusts.
…
[I]n Westport, unusually large ocean swells of up to 23 feet hammered the town’s jetty on Saturday, flooding the marina district with up to 14 inches of water, said Westport police Officer Chuck Cunningham.
On Saturday afternoon, 20-foot swells were coming in 17-second intervals, forcing businesses to put sandbags at their doors. The biggest problem, Cunningham said, was caused by cars driving through the flooded streets, causing wakes that topped the sandbags.
…
Burke, the meteorologist, said the next storm should dump about a half-inch of rain in Seattle and several inches in the mountains.
The most unusual element of the recent storms, he said, was the “lineup” of thunder and lightning Thursday night. Except for that, the weather has been predictable for fall in Seattle.
“Everybody is always surprised by the fall, and yet it comes every year,” said Burke.
That last sentence pretty much sums up the three-way hate-love-hate triangle I have with Seattlites and the Seattle weather. They’re all like the abused partner in a relationship, convinced that if we could just see the real Seattle we’d see that it’s really wonderful weather here.
In this installation in Seattle Center the water seeps out from under the bench on the right and flows downhill to the grate on the left.
In a city where watching water drain is almost a year-round activity, I’m not sure if this installation is…no, I’m sure, this is just redundant. Maybe a way for the locals to feel comforted if it’s been dry for a week.
Who green-lighted this thing?
The first rainy and mildly windy day of the season and of course our power is out, with the absolute incompetence so beloved by this region’s inhabitants fully on display. Wouldn’t want people to know things could actually be done correctly…then there would be expectations.
Seattle City Light employee: Okay, I’ll let the dispatchers know. [Sigh]. I’m not sure how long it will be because we don’t have a report of an outage.
Me: Ummm, I’m reporting an outage right now.
If either of the bumblef**ks running for mayor can convince me they’ll be able to keep my power on, or s**t, even that they can get it turned back on within a reasonable amount of time with only one phone call, they’d get my vote for sure.
Update: Overheard while getting some wifi at Starbucks: “It usually just spits at you here in Seattle.” Which means it “just mists” here. BS. The ratio of full-fledged rain to just-mist is about 4:1. I have no idea why this myth persists. Maybe it’s all the a-holes in their cars who don’t know what it’s like to wait at the bus or walk across campus when it’s raining.
I hate everybody. I’ve got my full-on hate going. Monday it was funny-looking people…today it’s people who are breathing.