The OTHER Missing Weather Story

December 22, 2008
UrbanSurvival

The OTHER Missing Weather Story
After my rant about East Coast assignment editors missing big/huge weather stories a friend of my called from Connecticut to tell me that there are still over a quarter-million folks without power (and they have been for longer than most hurricane impacted people this year) in his area, west into the Berkshires and north from there. Another reader says pretty much the same thing:

Hi George, I think you had too much coffee this morning. In Ct.we had 30" of snow this weekend. Plow truck died and my back still is causing me some pain. This in normal and it is winter, so if Washing state got 15"you just deal. Merry Christmas.

No slight intended toward the thousands without power (not that they'd know if the net is down, eh? So don't tell 'em, pleeze...) The PNW has gotten over 30" in places just east of Seattle, too. (Issaquah plateau). Very unusual.

But my point was more to assignment editors ferreting out the really angles and not just the 'easy feeds' from the big affils. The real stories are people about to lose homes to weather/plumbing/cold problems in the Northeast or the northeast and in the PNW. And while this goes on, we watch footage of tailgate parties? OMFG infotainment has dumbed us all...

Had light sleet start up here at the ranch today. Not even worth mentioning...kinda like tailgate parties!

NOT Dreaming of a....
Folks up in the Pacific Northwest are getting just plain sick of winter weather. A glance at the local Teevee stations shows more or less non-stop snow coverage over the weekend and it's apparently going to continue.

Thanks to East Coast media-centricity, the MSM (MainStreamMedia) hasn't figured out that there's a whole country located out in the wild, wild west; west of about Pennsylvania. Which is why headlines like "Dangerous Cold Sweeps into the East" get a lot of play on the East Coast. Gag me. Always snows in the Northeast. Northwest? No, uh uh.

But here's a news flash for the Eastern flatlanders: What folks here in East Texas call a 'mountain' wouldn't even be deserving of a name in Seattle as a hill. In fact, click here to see what traffic just south of downtown Seattle looks like going along the side of Beacon Hill. See that 'hill' the freeway is running along?

That hill has a HAAT that dwarfs the so-called 'mountains' we live amongst here in the outback. You do remember from our VHF/UHF discussions that HAAT is height above average terrain, right? Whatever...where was I? Oh yeah...

Flatlanders seem to think that a 'weather emergency' in the Pacific Northwest is somehow less of a Big Deal that when the East gets a few inches of precip. But click any of the Washington State Department of Transportation's Seattle-area freeway cameras and pay particular attention to the 'hills' that are evident all over the place. The Spokane Street camera was pointed at Beacon Hill this morning when I checked...about a mile past Holgate southbound.

I won't pick on Beacon Hill alone (although I grew up on the side of that hill near the top of the hill and about between those two cameras. Nope. There's enough snow in Seattle that my daughter Allison called last night (from Capitol Hill) to complain about the snow boarders and to wonder if anyone else besides her would be slogging through close to 20-inches of snow to get her office open today.

Even more fun that Capitol Hill? Wonder how the skiing is on the counterbalance? If you don't know about the counterbalance - and have never ridden a bike down it jumping into the air about mid-hill, you have missed one of life's best (and OK, maybe dumbest) adventures. Queen Anne Hill probably rises 300-feet or more over 8-9 blocks. If you're a movie connoisseur it's like Seattle's analog to the San Francisco hills in the movie Bullitt. That's about what Queen Anne Hill is like, that kind of terrain.

One of the 'silent sports' of living in Seattle when I was a kid was watching out-of-towners (flatlander types) trying to start their cars on a good 30-40% grade. Handling a clutch without using a parking brake 'helper' in Seattle, San Francisco, or some of Portland's better hills, is finishing school for manual-shifter types. Damn shame automatic transmissions came along. Took a fair bit of sport out of watching tourists.
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A little further south, down in Thurston County, the chief time monk's dogs (which look a little wild-eyed) were looking like this before the latest pile-on of snow started Sunday. Cliff reported 16" of snow on his deck and expected anywhere from 22-24" by this morning.
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I've driven in all kinds of snow: Anchorage in the middle of winter (not bad), over Donner Pass in a blizzard (anything to get to ski slopes), Spokane, and even a few East Coast towns. But best I can recall, there is nothing like a good ice-glazed hill in the Pacific Northwest with ice under an eighth-inch of barely melted water to separate those that brag from those who can really handle snow & ice driving. Flatlands? Puhleese.
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Although Portland is about 150-miles south, it too is in a heap-o-troubles from the snow, as a reader writes:
"I live near Portland, Oregon. We have been snowed in for a week now. More and more snow keeps coming with no end in sight. It wasn’t an earthquake it’s a snow-quake.

This weather is really hard on the people here. We seldom get this much snow and don’t have the equipment needed to dig out. Also with our snow we get lots and lots of ice. The City of Portland is almost shut down. There is a new batch of snow coming on Wednesday. "

And to the north of Seattle, much the same out of the lower Mainland of British Colombia where this "Huge snow dump hits south coast..." says the Vancouver Sun. By the way, that 45 cm of snow with 15 (or more) this weekend would be equivalent to about 24-26-inches. Way out of 'normal' for Nanaimo (one of my favorite sailing destinations back in the day - summers, of course).
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So pardon me, but when I see the big deal that folks in the 'east' are making about snowfalls of 4-7 inches, I think to myself "Aha! There really is nothing west of Chicago for most national MSM assignment editors, is there?"
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If there's a silver lining to the inclement weather it is this: The snow and ice will give the PowersThatBe a good chance to blame "an unusual wintery blast is clamed for slow retail sales before Christmas this year'. Hell, I can almost see the headline.

But, I suppose it beats the truth: We're entering a Second Depression and winter sucks. Or, is this the start of The Day After Tomorrow"? Whatever you call it, the Pacific Northwest is getting its butt kicked, powdered, and iced...

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