Friday, my boss told me to telecommute Monday due to expected snow. It’s clear as a bell up here next to the Canadian border, but snow is expected overnight. I’ve heard it might be a bit dicy around Snohomish County tomorrow.
So how’s the weather down there? Chance the drive in a car that doesn’t like snow? Or phone it in?
:mad:Shut UP! SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!!!
Only snows every 5 years my BEEhind! grrrrr!!! (not mad at you OP…just the snow)
I moved here because I’d hoped to not see much snow ever again. Sheesh, if I’d wanted this crap I’d have stayed in Anchorage! mumble mumble…gripe…
Sooooo…Albuquerque-ans. What’s it like to live and work in Albuquerque?
Oh yeah, and I’m working from home tomorrow.
Seattle os fairly clear ar rhe moment. Heavier snow predicted through Wednsday, last I heard. Tomorrow is a holiday so traffic will be lighter. Thr convergence zone at about Lynwood/Edmonds is expected to be tough if there** is/B] any snow.
Personally, I wouldn’t come down from Bellingham because the risk of damage to the car outweighs the wages earned (but then, I am retired and don’t have to do anything)
Link to KIRO TV traffic:http://www.kirotv.com/s/traffic/
Looks like we have an inch so far, and the snow is slowly falling in tiny flakes. I crunched through it in my zoriis, and it seems pretty dry. The Prius (no chains) could probably make it to the freeway, but there are some small ‘mountains’ between here and Seattle. I do wish I’d swapped the Prius and the Jeep yesterday, but I forgot to.
We had an inch or less of wet snow just before morning rush hour last Thursday. Most area freeways were at a total standstill from 7am to 10am.
The issue isn’t whether *your *car is OK in the snow. The issue is that it only takes one in 1000 cars/drivers who aren’t OK in the snow to trap you in solid-like-a-parking-lot traffic. And by the time they clear that accident, another one has happened just a couple miles further down line.
Telecommute.
The first time I tried to use the Prius in snow, it wouldn’t go. It has anti-slip drive. I know this isn’t technically correct, but the way I ‘understand’ it is this: When a wheel slips, power is shut down to it. I backed out of the driveway (in that first snow) and tried to start up the road. Both drive wheels were slipping, so both were ‘shut down’. Since the battery didn’t need charging, the engine was off. So I’m stepping on the accelerator pedal and the car is making not a sound – nor moving.
Since the snow is dry and no one has driven on it yet, I’m confident I could get under way. Once moving, it will keep going. But I have the news on. They’re showing areas of ice around Everett, and are reporting some spin-outs. I don’t mind driving in snow, but I hate driving on ice. And I got the high-sign Friday, so there’s no need to.
But yeah, snow slows people down. The people who lose it are useful, as they point out the most hazardous areas.
So I got to work early today.
I do not own a Prius, but it sounds like it’s the Traction Control feature that was giving you fits, Johnny. FWIW, you’re not the only Prius owner complaining, per this article. The linked article has a method for disabling the traction control on your car. Though involved, it sounds like you could at least get moving that way.
I’m in a suburb of Seattle, we have maybe an inch and a half of snow on the ground. It’s just enough to turn everything thoroughly white. It doesn’t show signs of melting off yet either, which is unusual - most of the time if we do get a little snow things are warm and green by 10:00 AM. It’s probably lighter than this downtown, but I’m sure traffic is a mess. We have no plows, very few sanders, lots of hills, and lots of people who panic.
Lucky for me, I had planned to take today off anyway. Unless we get more snow (and even if they’re forecasting it I’d give it no more than a 50/50 chance), I’ll be going to work as usual tomorrow. For now I’m going to go pull on boots and take my inner child out to play in the cold white stuff!
I’m just north of downtown. It’s snowing hard right now. It stopped for a few minutes, but started again. Sand Point Way is clear, but the side streets are ripe for skiers.
I just moved the Prius out to behind the SO’s truck. As expected, it did move. (No ice yet.) Still, why drive to Seattle when I can wok in my pyjamas? (FWIW, my boss lives in Lynnwood, and she’s telecommuting today too. She said she didn’t want to chance the roads.)
We’ll go down to Bellingham after work – in the Jeep.
I’m 30 miles south of Seattle. It’s snowing gangbusters and has been for quite some time. Everything is white here.
Telecommuting again today. The weather sounds nasty down south.
Not snowing here. The temperature has gone up a degree since I got up a couple of hours ago. We’re up to 13ºF. The deep sink pipes are frozen. I turned the heat up in the little bedroom to see if I can thaw them. The cold water faucet in the bath tub is frozen. The pipe to the toilet is frozen. I have a bucket in the tub to fill the toilet tank with hot water from the tub, and a space heater blowing in the direction of the toilet’s water line.
It is bad down here, and even worse in Olympia. I’ve got eight inches at the top of my driveway which is a hill. I think it’s finally slowing down though. Fortunately, I did not have to report into work today.
I was surprised to see on the news how FUBARed everything was when this weather started, as I was under the impression that ice was not uncommon in the Seattle area in winter. It looked like nobody was at all prepared for it (municipalities and highway departments, I mean).
Sorry you guys are having such a rough time. If you need to borrow some road salt, we midwesterners have a huge salt surplus this year.
I heard we have plenty of salt and sand this year. But major arteries are given priority, and a lot of Seattle’s other streets are on hills. It seems people down there still haven’t figured out that icy hills are not ideal for driving on.
Up here at (just about) Latitude 49, we’re up to 17ºF. Despite the warming of the house, the afore-mentioned pipes are still frozen.
Didn’t this happen to you last year, too? When you can drive again, go get some heat tape and wrap the exposed pipes. It’s not terribly expensive and will save you lots of headaches in the cold. Also, let the offending taps run while the weather is below freezing. Not just a drip, but a trickle. Yes, you waste some water, but burst pipes waste more, as well as wasting your house. If they are inside cabinets, leave the doors open, so warmer air can circulate.
Good luck.
I’m in one of the suburbs of Seattle, we’ve got five inches of snow (give or take) and it’s now starting to rain. Darn. I was hoping the snow would stick around longer. It did, however, take out the power lines for most of the morning, so I had a legitimate excuse to sit in front of the fire and ignore work for a while.
My husband just spent an hour and a half shoveling off the long driveway. I think he misses the winters back home where they actually had real winters.
From my perspective, the Seattle DOT is doing a tremendous job this year, the best I’ve seen in the 18 years I’ve lived here. They got a real black eye a couple of years ago and this season, they finally have a solid plan outlining in advance which arterials will be cleared to what standard. And they’ve gotten the job done. This is the first time that they’ve been able to maintain the steep arterial though my neighborhood to the bare and wet standard. Any other year would have seen several jack-knifed buses blocking the road.
We have too many hills, and we don’t get these conditions often enough for the city to have a big enough fleet of trucks to hit it all. My neighborhood, for example, is on the side of a steep hill, and once you take all the parked cars into consideration, most of the streets are one lane. The plows would never fit. So we wait for the rain towns everything away.
It seems like the last three winters have been harsher than average. For a while in the late 90s, I only owned a motorcycle. There were two winters where the weather never got bad enough to make riding to work difficult. it’s usually wet and relatively mild, not icy. My memory is that the usual cold weather pattern here involves a really dry cold spilling out from the Fraser river or through the passes eastward.
Not too bad up here in the ‘Banana Belt’ (San Juan’s) but sounds like Olympia/South Sound is getting hammered pretty good. When we get the somewhat rare storms like this we just hunker down. We have just the County road crew’s single roadgrader for plowing duty on our island so we just have to live with it for a few days.
What we really need from you are snow plows. This morning on the news, the mayor proudly reported that all TWENTY-FIVE plows owned by the city were on the job… This for a city of 500,000 and 84 square miles.