Snowpocalypse

The temperatures weren’t anything like what recently happened back east but Seattle had it’s own extraordinary weather over the last couple of weeks. Here in Bellevue we had snow over 16 inches deep. The weather historians said it was the most snow since the winter of 1968-1969. With all the hills around here there were lots of cars which didn’t make it home and were abandoned on the side of the street. Some of them were badly crumpled.

We were without mail service for about 10 days. No Amazon deliveries for a simlar timeframe. No garbage or recycling pickup for three weeks. Our power stayed on except for a few outages that lasted no more than 30 seconds. Others, within a quarter mile of us, were without power for a couple days.

I worked from home for about six days as no one else on my team could make it in to work. I could have made it with my car. I could even walk to and from work if I really wanted to. But I didn’t see a point to it. Just stay put and don’t risk getting smacked by someone who didn’t have the proper tires on their vehicle.

Barb’s brother had a surgery scheduled for last Friday in downtown Seattle. His wife had little or no experience driving in the snow so Barb and I volunteered to bring them home after another snowfall. He lives on a hill close to the hill Barb and I live on. The street we live on had not been plowed and had several inches of snow on it. With no idea what his street conditions were like I took off the all season tires which would have been adequate for our street and getting into Seattle and replaced them with studded mud and snow tires. We had no problems traversing the snow and made the trip to and from downtown Seattle without any unexpected adventures.

What was odd to Barb and I was the run on groceries. The shelves of bread, milk, meat and fresh produce were almost completely bare. We got a few things before the snow came but not really much more than usual. I did fill the gas cans for the generator and topped off the tank in my car but we would have been just fine without the extra supplies.

The only issue we had was the snow damaged a gutter as it slid off the roof over the deck.

The Seattle Times reported heart warming stories of people helping others. Daughter Jaime, also in Bellevue, spent many hours shoveling snow in her condo parking lot to help clear a path to the street. She also helped numerous people get out of their car ports with cars poorly equipped for the adventure.

Below the break are pictures of the snow around our place.

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This was on the 4th. The first snowfall.

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This is from the 9th from a similar viewpoint.

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After the biggest snow fall we shoveled my side of the driveway and the sidewalk. Barb’s car wasn’t equipped for the snow and we didn’t bother to make a path for it. After that we only cleared the driveway. There just wasn’t anyplace to put the rest of the snow.

Here are some empty shelves at the grocery stories:

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This is the view from my reloading bench on the morning of the 11th.

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I decided this was the tea of the week for me.20190211_153903Adjusted

The 11th ended with a heavy snowfall with very large flakes.

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I shoveled both sides of the driveway after the snow slowed down some. It was still coming down fast enough that it put another half inch on the ground by the time I finished.

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It’s a little hard to distinguish but the pile of snow in the lower left is about four feet high. This almost the same viewpoint as the picture of Barb with the sidewalk cleared off between the camera and her. By this point we had given up on the sidewalk.

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On the 13th the snow was melting some and it slid off the roof over the deck. This is the gutter that was damaged by the snow. I was able to bend it back into shape but some of the metal was torn in places. It’s functional though.

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10 thoughts on “Snowpocalypse

  1. Nice. You could keep a ton of human organs forcibly harvested from Chinese Christians really fresh with all that snow.

  2. One of the advantages of a powered snowblower/snowthrower is that you can toss the snow further into the yard so it doesn’t pile up so high right next to the cleared area. After a really big snowstorm the piles can still get pretty impressive. Here in the midwest, storms that overwhelm the normal preparations and equipment tend to acquire names, like “the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940” or “the Halloween Blizzard of ’91”.

  3. No city/county/state snow plows? A local farmer plow our road.

    The joy of cleaning your driveway only to get it plow back full of snow.
    I do like the quiet just after a big snow storm.

    • There were plows clearing the main roads and doing a pretty good job. But some of the side streets and especially culdescs didn’t get much attention. So then cars were abandoned on the side streets making them harder to clear.

  4. We had to shovel the driveway three times. Some pretty good sized piles next to it, even still. No road plow for the street in front of the house, though; deep ruts very fast. topped out at ~18″ accumulation.
    Stores get depleted fresh stuff from a combo of higher purchase rates and stalled deliveries when the the trucks can’t deliver bread, milk, meats, fruits & veggies, etc. Canned goods are easier to warehouse near to stores at distribution centers and deliver regularly, and more people have a stockpile of them in their own pantry shelves.

    One thought that occurred to me was “now would be a really, really bad time for a large earthquake or ice storm that takes down the power lines, etc.”

  5. As I sit in my travel trailer in Okeechobee Fl I feel “almost” guilty about missing my first winter since 1972. We just got to the point where we just didnt want to deal with Michigan winter. I’m impressed with the snow you are getting.

  6. Pingback: Signing some papers at the courthouse | The View From North Central Idaho

  7. One of the things I learned when I ran a small truck snowplow for my dad was to not wait until the snow stopped falling before you began removing it. An important point both for plows and shovels.
    The biggest problem, especially when shoveling, is that the snow compacts under the weight of the later snow, thus getting heavier. This is not a problem if you are only getting 2″ forcast, but don’t trust them to be accurate, do your own checking.
    A related problem is how wet the snow is. Fluffy stuff you can move with a broom is easy to work with, but snow can get very heavy with a high moisture content. This is the other reason to do your own checking.

      • I figured that.
        This was geared more toward the general reader. For some reason, a fair proportion of people in snow country never seem to consider the mechanics of moving snow, they just grab a shovel and start heaving it to the side. I suspect that these are the same people who tend to end up having a coronary after a heavy snowfall.

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