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John Brecher / msnbc.com
Two stitched composite images of downtown Seattle as seen from the Jose Rizal Bridge, on Jan. 17 and 18.
Snowmageddon. Snowpocalypse. The Pacific Northwest, known for its rain, was instead forecast to get dumped on by snow. Here in Seattle, they were calling for 8-16 inches. Our forecast went national, then international when the BBC picked up the story. Grocery store shelves were stripped of their milk and eggs. Schools were preventively cancelled. Some metropolitan buses ran on chains Tuesday, even though few roads had snow on the ground. To borrow a phrase from my colleague Allison Linn, the “snowspense” was mounting.
Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Totem pole at the Rotary Viewpoint Park on 35th Ave. SW and SW Alaska St. photographed Jan. 17 and 18 in Seattle.
And for good reason. Our region isn’t very prepared for snow. Most of us own rain boots, not snow boots, let alone a snow shovel. Seattle didn’t even use salt on its roads until after a snowstorm hobbled our city for almost two weeks during the holidays in 2008. During that storm, I saw something here that I’d never seen when living in cold places like Chicago or the Northeast. Drivers stopped their cars – on the interstate - and walked away. For days, our road shoulders were parking lots.
This time around, it wasn’t totally a false alarm, but it didn’t happen at the scale previously advertised. It is snowing here in Seattle this morning, but so far it’s a fine, lazy blanket (as seen in this time-lapse video), not accumulating much more than two inches. You can see from the before and after images photographed by John Brecher and Jim Seida that the streets are quiet as people avoid the snowy roads.
John Brecher / msnbc.com
A snowman from an earlier storm sits slowly melting in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle on Jan. 17. But it was bolstered by a return of snow on Jan. 18.
We aren’t new to these wildly veering forecasts. Here, you can’t really blame the meteorologists. We have such a swirl of forces influencing our weather – two mountain ranges, a giant volcano or two, sounds and lakes –how’s a weather system to navigate that? It can be pouring rain at my Mom’s house 30 miles away, and here in Seattle, we’re having a sunny day.
Our time with the snow will be brief. It’s forecast to be near 50 by Friday. But, as we all know, that could change. In the meantime, steep hills will be closed around the city and will become sledders’ playgrounds. The cross country skis, usually reserved for our nearby mountains, will get a rare lowland workout (mine too. Don’t tell my boss). We will “work from home” if we can. We’ll take pictures of our houses, children and dogs in the snow – because well, it’s a beautiful and rare backdrop for us. Facebook will be busy with snow commentary.
Then the rain will return. Cross that “Seattle gets an average of six inches of snow a year” off the list.
Jim Seida / msnbc.com
Looking across 35th ave SW toward downtown Seattle from the roof of the Merrill Gardens Retirement Community in West Seattle, photographed Jan. 17 and 18, in Seattle.
See more of the before and after images from Seattle
Northwest snow hits areas outside of Seattle hardest
Leave a Comment:
Speakfor yourself. It's four inches and rising on Queen Anne and the hill is shut.
Whoopty do! A couple of inches and they go into shutting down.
Mike in Spokane Wa.
People from Alaska are laughing right now. My neighbors across the street used to live in Alaska and the wife's sister still does. The sister in Alaska says she has 5 feet of snow in her back yard.
Leave it to the media to blow things out of proportion.
where is the snow?! I don't see a difference. THAT is not snow!
I'm under 12" of ICE & snow on the line of Lewis & Thurston Co. Hoping house doesn't buckle under weight!
Hey "dogstylemike",
I'm from Central Texas and we shut down if we get the PREDICTION of snow; if we got 2 actual inches we may not recover. LOL... And I'm not kidding. :)
It's nice to see Seattle prepared for the predicted storm, even if the storm wasn't as bad as predicted. I think some of the posters here are missing that point - they're simply not used to that amount of frozen white stuff falling out of the sky. Having spent my whole life in Ohio, I'm used to some impressive snowfalls, but I know if I head to some other areas during the winter, it would take me a bit of work to get used to the amount of snow that falls. My brother and sister-in-law (from Michigan) are currently living on the island of Hokkaido, Japan, and they are regularly covered in the white stuff in the winter there. Even two people who are used to lake effect snow can take some getting used to the new standard for winter they're living with. Don't judge the people in Seattle by the standards of parts of the country that simply have more reason to be used to snowy winters.
Those pictures are nice to look at but the amount of snowfall will not put Seatle out of business for long.
That totem pole shot looks like they got a whole inch... [ gasp! ..the horror! ]
The SF Bay Area gets snow about once every 20 years. Panic and delight ensue in equal proportion.
Please...I get that they aren't an area that gets large amounts of snow often ... but are kidding me?
Really? I live in upstate New York. The pictures they are showing of Seattle only looks like..maybe 3"
Please, give me a break, and you call this Snowameggon???
That is in no way snowmageddon.....last year we had almost a 8 foot pile of snow in the front of the house from the multiple 2 + foot snow storms in the NY area. 4 inches does not constitute a story.
Woopie-friken-do! What a bunch of west coast cry babies. I'm from Louisiana and we get more snow than that. Give me a break.
The hills in every neighborhood and every street are the danger; don't know the grades per se, but some of them are pretty steep, and short. Also, they don't have snow plows, sand/salt trucks, or in most cases, a snow shovel. Those hills are tricky even without the constant rain & mist.
I think they should rename 2 inches or less, a Seattle Blizzard
Why do people who live in brutally cold environments love to brag about how many inches they can handle? It's unusual for Seattle to accumulate this much snow and they also don't have the resources to deal with it. Stop pounding your chest that your such a man and people in Seattle are wimps because they can't tolerate something that you've grown used to.
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There's a 7-11 in Seattle
I recently moved to the Seattle area from Vermont. I grew up dealing with amounts of snow and ice that will teach you how to drive and how to know when to stay off the roads. The recent storm here in the Seattle area has made me a little homesick as I enjoy this weather. However, I have never seen an infrastructure in this kind of climate and geography that can't deal with this kind of storm. Worse yet, the city of Seattle is set up in the most inconvenient place as it is on a very steep hill side. Finally, all of the de-icer that was used to melt the snow from the first part of the storm was only partially successful and the roads froze when the temps dropped over night last night. When the rain started to fall this morning, it was still 30 degrees out and the ice started to accumulate until it switched back to snow this afternoon. I would never have believed it if I wasn't here. There is just something fundamentally wrong with a state government that doesn't plan for this.