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.
This was on the 4th. The first snowfall.
This is from the 9th from a similar viewpoint.
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:
This is the view from my reloading bench on the morning of the 11th.
I decided this was the tea of the week for me.
The 11th ended with a heavy snowfall with very large flakes.
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.
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.
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.