We had the strangest winter here in the Seattle area. I haven’t lived here that long (relatively) but in the time I’ve been here I’ve been under the impression that it really doesn’t snow or get that cold here. Since 1998 the weather has pretty much agreed with that statement until this winter.
Strangely, it got very cold and first a wind storm blew through here. The wind storm was actually on December 15th, 2006. The wind speed approached 70 mph in some places. There was a lot of damage caused by trees breaking and taking down power lines.
Needless to say, we lost power for three days. Luckily we have a gas-fired fireplace and gas cooking appliances. We were able to cook and barely stay warm. The fireplace is really more for show than go and puts out very little heat.
On the second day we made a dash to the grocery store which was open and running on very limited generator power. You couldn’t buy anything refrigerated because they were trying to preserve what they had but in the end, they should have sold what they had in stock because it all went bad anyway and had to be thrown out. We stocked up on soups and other canned foods since we could warm it on our stove.
Once our power came back on we had to throw everything in the refrigerator out. It actually seemed pretty cold in the fridge but for safety we just tossed it.
We were the fortunate ones. Carol’s mother was without power for a week! We had her stay with us since her heat and stove is electric and without a refrigerator, your food choices are pretty much limited to what comes in cans and boxes.
Besides the wind storm, we had two snow and ice storms. These caused the kids to miss many days of school, which in the state of Washington, they have to make up. At this point, they will be going to school to almost the 4th of July!
My car is a rear wheel drive and doesn’t do well at all if the roads have much slush on them. On the way home from work during the first snow storm, so much slush and ice had formed on the roads, my car was barely making it up any road at all. Traffic had completely stopped everywhere because no one could get up the hills in Redmond. There was no way out. After three and a half hours trying to make it closer to home, I had to throw in the towel. My car was just not going to make it up the hill and it was becoming a very dangerous situation. Before something happened, I decided to go ahead and park it on the side of the road and walk home. I was not alone! Lots of people were in the same situation and walked with me. It was about a three mile walk in the snow, and yes, it was up hill.
Carol and I went to get the car the next day and I managed to get it home safely.
You would think I would have learned my lesson. The second snow storm hit in January and history repeated itself. Luckily I made it closer the second time (I left work earlier) and only had to walk about two miles and no hill this time.
The next day, Carol and I went to go get the car from where I had abandoned it. There is was, nice and lonely and cold by the side of the road right where I left it. This time it was different. There was much more ice and snow than the last storm and that car was not going to budge. It just slid around like it was on an ice skating ring.
We search all over town to try to find tire chains for the car but in the end, because of the low profile tires it was going to have to be a special order everywhere we went. We started to look for sand or de-icer . . . something to get my car off the ice it was stuck on. We were at Fred Meyer looking for sand when I spotted some windshield aerosol de-icer. I convinced Carol to pick up two cans, just in case. Who knows!
Well, coincidentally while we were looking for sand, we had to pass by the car again. We stopped because I wanted to see if the de-icer would melt the ice under the tires. Surprise! It actually worked! I had to do two applications to get the car far enough up the road to the dry area. From there I made it home.
I guess I better go get those tire chains now!