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Seattle made the NY Times for having snow. Our "media" can now be gratified for their endless "snow" coverage.



Seattle Sees Most Snow in a Decade
By WILLIAM YARDLEY


SEATTLE - December means darkness in this Northwest city. Combine the clouds with the rain and with the fact that Seattle gets less winter daylight than most other cities in the United States and the sum of it all can seem like concentrated gloom.

Yet on Sunday, the first full day of winter, much of the city was instead a bright white blur. Snow fell, recoating the streets with as much as eight fresh inches after a week of wintry weather that has closed schools, canceled flights and defied expectations. And more snow is in the forecast.

"We've got to write this one down," said Kate Allyn, a 40-year resident, standing at the top of Phinney Ridge, a neighborhood in north Seattle that, like many others in this hilly city, became a miniature mountain playground over the weekend. "We're used to 45 degrees and drizzle. We usually get our snow by driving 45 minutes to the mountains."

It has been at least a decade since Seattle has seen such snow, and temperatures in the teens have been in record territory. On Sunday, children as well as people in their 40s zoomed down slopes on sleds and snowboards.

"Nobody's panicking," said Marty Spiegel of Greenwood True Value Hardware. "Though there was some disappointment that we sold out of sleds." (uh that is a white neighborhood, black people were at Safeway screaming we are running out of food, white people make me laugh but the media avoids my hood.. fear of the blacks and poor)

Of course, in a city of transplants, there was no shortage of seen-it-all folks from snowier climes who mocked how snow brings Seattle to a standstill. A favorite punch line was the Seattle Public Schools, which canceled classes Wednesday on the mere threat of more snow. None fell that day.

And not every image was a postcard. Two charter buses carrying about 80 students slid through a barrier above Interstate 5 on Friday, coming dangerously close to crashing down on the highway. No one was injured.

The precision of the forecasting was a popular topic. Clifford F. Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, fielded hundreds of queries on his weather blog.

"Several of you commented about the nature of the snow last night," Mr. Mass wrote Sunday morning. "Most of you are used to the large, dendritic crystals that fall when temperatures are near freezing." He added, "Last night, you got to enjoy the type of snow they get in colder climates."

Elsewhere in the nation, weekend storms knocked out power to thousands of customers and created hazardous conditions for holiday travelers. Gusty winds in the Midwest, where wind chills dipped to minus 30, produced whiteouts that contributed to at least three vehicle pileups, The Associated Press reported, and parts of Illinois, Iowa and Maine were under blizzard warnings.