Metro’s official stance for the day: “screw you, we’re staying home in bed”.

Context is everything. I used to go visit my father in Alberta for Christmas, and sometimes when I came back I’d be wandering around outside in just a t-shirt when it was about 32F here, because that was about seventy degrees (F) warmer than where I just was.

During the Rose Bowl, the daytime temps can be as low as the 50s. The Big 10 fans from Penn State (or in other years Ohio State or Michigan or wherever) will be reveling in the warmth in shorts and t-shirts. Meanwhile the Southern Californians will be wearing down jackets and stocking caps.

I was driving my normal Seattle rain speed, and everyone else was cowering in the slow lanes. On the radio they had public service announcements “Remember, stopping distance increases in the rain….”

Well there is one other reason they drive more slowly when it rains in So Calif.: as that radio announcer probably also said, and as the Dept of Motor Vehicles handbook says (and they test you on this when you apply for a driver’s license; not being native to So Calif I got the answer wrong): roads and freeways are especially slick when it starts raining after a long period of no rain (and most rainstorms in So Calif are exactly that: the first rainfall after a period of no rain).

That freeway that’s usually fine at 65 mph might not be so good when it’s wet — not due to the moisture per se, but due to the accumulated oils, grease, and debris that dissolves with those initial raindrops.

On the driver’s license exam, I figured that an even worse traction situation was when the rainfall was so severe as to create standing puddles of water, so that was the answer that I picked. Wrongo, according to the DMV; it’s during that initial rainfall that traction is at its worst.

Now this might be an urban legend propagated by the DMV for all I know. Or it might be that those out-of-towners zipping along the Golden State Freeway (aka I-5) in the rain are being as oblivious as the Seattleites zipping along in icy snowy conditions instead of slowing down. I don’t pretend to know the truth, but I do slow down when it starts raining.

GLOBAL WARMING…sheesh!!!

I hope you are kidding…and for what it’s worth, you probably are since I suck at recognizing sarcasm on the internet…

Context is everything. I used to go visit my father in Alberta for Christmas, and sometimes when I came back I’d be wandering around outside in just a t-shirt when it was about 32F here, because that was about seventy degrees (F) warmer than where I just was.

BTW, Seattle does have sand/plow trucks (you can thank Charlie Chong for that). A decade ago that wasn’t the case, the city had to wait for King County to get done with theirs before they could borrow them. Usually it melted first. That changed after the ’96 blizzard. As bad as it is now, it used to be worse. (I still remember fondly the ’91 storm, when the high-rise bridges at either end of 520 iced over and cars were able to get down onto the mid-span but then found themselves sliding backwards as they tried to climb out. Eventually the State Patrol closed the bridge and led everybody out on foot.)

I’ve been meaning to hike up the hill. Nothing like snowshoeing down Broadway and stopping to get a bowl of Pho. (In 91 there was a Thai place that had a to-go window on the street, and I saw people cross-country ski up to it to get Satay in peanut sauce.)

BTW, if you think “snow-pocalypse” is hyperbole, how about this? Environment Canada (the government agency officially responsible for forecasts in a country that’s kind of familiar with winter weather) had this up for Ontario a day or two ago:

Environment Canada is generally not prone to exaggeration unless there is deemed to be a real threat. We evaluate weather information and prediction models in a measured, scientific manner and couple that with overall impacts for significant events.

Mother Nature from time to time will line up a near perfect set of conditions that generate a series of significant events. That time appears to be the coming week or so for many portions of southern Ontario in the form of snow storms. There appears to the right balance of sufficiently cold air in place, with Arctic highs to the north and a storm track along the lower Great Lakes. The term ‘snow-mageddon‘ is not meant to alarm anyone or make light of the situation, but to highlight the cumulative effects and impacts that a series of snow storms can have on a wide region.”

By the way, I saw a guy walking around in shorts and t-shirt this morning!