Seattle Snowmageddon 2019

It all started on February 4th, 2019. Monday, the 4th, to be precise.

All the local news stations, and social media postings of Washington State Department of Transportation, and weather forecasts called for the Polar Vortex to push several snow packing storms to the Pacific Northwest.

They were calling it Seattle Snowmageddon 2019.

As a long time denizen, I’ve heard this winter storm alert before. In fact, every year ‘they’ threaten snow. And like the proverbially “boy who called wolf”, I arrogantly ignored it.

I’ve burned by it two years ago in 2017 when a measurably amount of snow fell in the area. However, it was short lived. In my memory, my experience of significant amount of snow was in 2006, 1996 and 1994.

It’s 10 days later, on Valentine’s Day 2019, there still is snow on the ground and in the streets. In fact, the city of North Bend has (had?) 2 feet of it dump on top of them. So much so that the governor declared a state of emergency for the city to activate resources and material to unearth them.

Happy Birthday To Me

Luckily, after one of the slowest nights I’ve experienced at Woodinville Costco on Monday, I had the next 3 days off. It was my pseudo-weekend plus my MLK Day Floater.

On February 8th, the second snow storm was set to pound the region again. Now that weather forecasters had credibility, this announcement sent the region into a buying frenzy.

The day before, my birthday, my co-workers / friends were posting photos on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter of empty shelves at Costco, Safeway, Fred Meyer, and all sorts of grocery stores.

It was eye-opening to say the least.

Events were being canceled in anticipation of this second of three storms. One of which was Whisper: Prohibition Party that I was gonna use to celebrate my birthday.

Guess not … rescheduled to April 12th for the safety of vendors and party-goers alike.

And then, like clockwork prediction, the second storm hammered the Lake Stevens, Clearview, Monroe, Woodinville area. Just like everywhere else.

Seattle Snowmageddon 2019

The third storm hit this week but sporadically throughout the Pacific Northwest. As of this writing (Valentine’s Day) there are no forecasts calling for more snow storms, maybe rain.

However, even if it drops more snow or rain or snow/rain mix, that doesn’t dismiss us from the snow melting and the potential flooding from the snow melt.

Temperatures have risen above freezing steadily. Much like the funny memes, short videos mocking “get your bread and milk!”, even during #snowmageddon that vegan food was largely untouched.

Amazingly, the local utility companies have been working around-the-clock to restore power to each of us, or maintain power despite falling trees, or blown transformers.

Snow plows with sanding have been dutifully working long hours to clear main highways, arterials and then work toward off-streets. Speaking of which, I’ve done my fair share of snow shoveling as part of my home owner responsibility to my tenant / roommate. Granted she’s my sister, but still if it was anyone else this is an expectation for me.

Additionally, it’s a safety issue. If she or I fall, then injured from said fall, we / I couldn’t work to earn money. That’s an issue for most of us that live paycheck-to-paycheck. The term that pops into my head is “hand to mouth living”.

My hope is we’re experiencing the tail end of Seattle Snowmageddon, so we can begin the process of digging out of it. Currently, I’m glaring at the somewhat melted snow from my office perch in my house.

Let’s just start digging and (you guessed it) … keep digging.

‘los; out