PNW "Snowpocelips" of Jan 2012! (lots of pics)

[Petros]

As many of you might know, the Pacific Northwest has made national news with an exceptionally heavy snow fall accompanied by unusually cold weather. These are just a few images of what I have experienced; We got about 4-5" over the weekend, no problem for my Tercel4wd. But of course it was that weekend that my wife's 4x4 Mazada MPV had the alternator go out (only after 300k miles). Expecting it I had a spare, so on Monday I stood in the snow and replaced the alternator for her at a youth winter camp retreat she was running over in Lake Stevens (not too far from Arlington). She made it home that night about 5 pm and unloaded the gear. My daughter thought she would take her friend to a night dance class about six pm. But after the MPV swapped ends going down our hill she parked it and walked back to the house. By the time I got home about 7 pm, the hill was undriveable, totally slick with compact snow and ice. So I parked it at the bottom of the hill for the night and hiked the last 1/4 mile to the house. It snowed all night so I took Tuesday off to stay home and play in the snow.


It snowed on and off all day and night Tuesday, thought I should get to my office for at least a few hours, and we were running low on a few groceries. This was what my car was like on Wednesday morning.


I dug it out and made my way the seven miles to town. went to the gym and than grocery shopping.


That is one of my neighbor's house in the background. I prepared the plans for it in my office a few years ago, and assisted him with his building permits.


Here I am at Gold's gym parking lot Wednesday morning, notice my car has the most snow on the roof!


And look! Another Tercel4wd in the parking lot!


Made it all the way up to our driveway Wednesday night (much to my surprise), and the power was out....View of our property looking east out the dining room window on Thursday morning. About 4 more inches fell last night, no top of the 12 inches we had the day before. That is our deck railing with all the snow on it.


More of our property, you can see the goat pen down below, the fence past the buried Buick.


The front of my garage/shop Thursday morning, buried is the long lost "Hermes" Tercel waiting to get finished and sold. It is an 84 T4wd I got early last year in New Mexico, and after several aborted attempts to get it home (including a mishap with a deer in Texas) I got it home last November. Looks like it will be a while before I can get to work on it again.


Since I managed to make it up the top of the hill to our driveway Wed night I thought it would be a chance to switch to studded snow tires. It was really cold for this area last night. So here we are digging out Thursday morning and installing the studded tires. There were many reports of ice storms locally, but all we got was more snow.


Changing tires to studded ones in the snow takes a lot of extra time. Everything was covered in ice, I had to chip out the lug nuts to get a socket on them. I always end up doing this in the snow because I hate driving around all winter on studded tires when we do not need it most of the time. They are noisy and seriously affects fuel economy.



The steep road in front of our house. It was bulldozed by one of our neighbors but it still had a lot of compacted snow and ice over the gravel.


This is our driveway, and if you look carefully one of our goats that got out of their pasture. looking for forage no doubt, we have to feed them hay in the winter and we are getting low right now. Hauling 80 lb bails of hay up that hill right now is not exactly an easy task. Let them forage for themselves! We might have to have a barbeque if this weather keeps up much longer.


The Gold's Gym parking lot on Thursday morning. Where did everybody go? A bit of snow keeps everyone home. I finally got a hot shower, the power had went off at our house the night before. When you are on a well, no power means no water either. At least we can keep the house warm.


Snow plow right in the middle of Arlington WA. We are only 115 ft above sea level, very rare to see this kind of snow fall, with more in the forecast for the weekend!


Main street (Olympic Avenue) in the downtown Arlington area, with a local trying to get run over by crossing in front of me in the snow.


More of the main street in town, seeing this much snow is just amazing. you can not even see any pavement despite several days worth of traffic on it.


This is the parking lot behind my office, usually more than full by this time of day. I almost have it all to my self (all I need is some local idiot to do donuts in it and hit my Tercel). Half the stores are closed down town right now.



This is the view of our city hall (built over 100 years ago), from the front door to my office on Olympic Avenue.

[ARCHINSTL]

Whaaaa! "Access denied"
You got something against STL, home of the World Champion Cardinals?

Seriously, I was hoping you'd come through with some pix - it sure seems dramatic from the news accounts!
Tom M.

[Petros]

I used the image loading tool for the first time, I thought they were loaded as "public", is there a way to change that?. When I click on them they enlarge just fine, but I was the one that loaded them. I did not find the image loader any faster than using photobucket, so I do not think i will use it.

The serious problem areas are all over the news, this keeps most people at home (which is a good thing). With more traffic the roads would be very unsafe. As it is now it is kind of fun, especially with studded snow tires and the T4wd!

[ARCHINSTL]

Maybe try Photobucket? I've been just loading them directly from my 'puter for some time now using the "upload attachment" tab under the blank form - more convenient and they can be enlarged by the viewer just by left-clicking.
Tom M.

[takza]

I used the image loading tool for the first time, I thought they were loaded as "public", is there a way to change that?. When I click on them they enlarge just fine, but I was the one that loaded them. I did not find the image loader any faster than using photobucket, so I do not think i will use it.

The serious problem areas are all over the news, this keeps most people at home (which is a good thing). With more traffic the roads would be very unsafe. As it is now it is kind of fun, especially with studded snow tires and the T4wd!

Get into that folder and click EDIT...you can set it to general access or whatever....

[Petros]

Okay, I edited the original post to link to the photobucket pics. Much better images I would say.

Anyone want to add their own pictures to this thread? Post away!

[ARCHINSTL]

Wow - Thanks for the pix!
It just reinforces my conviction that I, in flatland STL, will NEVER post pix of our snow...
Your City hall does not look like it's that age - pretty forward-thinking architect. Neat-looking "small-town America" shots.

Would it help for studded tire installation in the future if, "the night before," you just put a garbage bag over the wheels - or maybe slip a piece of cardboard up into the wheel wells to cover the tires?
Tom M.

[87_4WD]

thats a WHOLE lotta snow u got there buddy... holy crap! we got hit with that kinda snow a year or so ago, that was nuts. this is all we got here so far, about 6 inches or so and the dumb weather guy says we may have more on the way over the rest of the weekend, but i'd imagine nothing like what u got! hope u have fun in the terc!

Picture.jpg

[toughtercel]

It finally snow here the first time last week but only 4 inches then freeze for almost a week , Newscast always kept saying will be 12 " of snow coming , nothing then again said the same thing , No extra snow till it rain last Friday , now all gone .
Last Thursday I drove around Bellingham,Wa there were a lot of hard icy snow on the road , it scare me while braking at intersection , There was no salt on the road which i understand that in Washington but at Arlington, Wa , it look like they spread mixture of Dirt/Salt at downtown , notice there a dump truck plowing while spraying stuff on the road .
Hey Petro , great shots , I always enjoy photos .

[hberdan]

Great photos! Someone told me today that the entire Seattle area got hammered, and there are very few snowplows. I guessI assumed that being so close to the mtns that snowplows would be available in huge numbers.
Speaking of huge numbers, so far this season I've had over 89" of snow at my house, the largest single event was about 20".We don't get those ice storms, so I don't generally use studded tires--just snow tires. I do have cable chains, just in case.

[Petros]

Seattle is as sea level, and with the Puget Sound so close to moderate the temperatures, it rarely gets cold enough for any sustained snow accumulation. Most winters we might get a few days of wet slushy snow with no accumulations, no big deal, decent tires work fine on it. But about every 4 or 5 years, we get a cold arctic blast that is also full of moisture, and than another, and sometimes even another, without time for it melt off. That is when the cities shut down, just too much traffic, and only a few mishaps cause grid lock. So most people stay home.

It is always a difficult choice any highway department around here: how much to spend of their equipment budget on snow plows that rarely get used? Especially with such a tight budget the last few years. But there has never been enough snow plows for the rare big events. The last Seattle Mayor lost his job based on how poorly he managed the big snow of 2008/9, (he has also choose to spend money in other ways so the limited snow plow fleet was mostly down for repairs too!). They always make bad decisions with poor planning. You would think they would learn, but staff retire or transfer, new Mayors, new council men/women get elected, and everyone forgets what happened "last time".

For example, they rarely use salt to melt ice because it usually melts off within a day or so, it is really only a problem if it stays below freezing for days on end (which is pretty rare). They mostly use sand, which is swept up and stored for next time, but for really bad icing conditions they need to use some sort of deicer. There was some idiotic idea that the salt they would put on the roads during the rare ice events would harm the fish in Puget Sound when it melts off, so they choose not to salt the roads. So when the Dec 08/Jan 09 event hit (3 weeks of below freezing weather, with snow), there was mass carnage on the city streets and on the hwys.

It completely escapes me how allowing salt to wash into Puget Sound once every 5 years could possibly harm it since the salt is MADE FROM THE SEA WATER!!! Motor oil, antifreeze, etc is far worse for the fish (and occurs year round) so they have storm water run-off traps to separate the bad stuff anyway, but it does not separate the salt. I think the environmentalists on the city council must have had their brains removed, exactly how did putting all those cars in the wrecking yard, and people in the hospital (or in the ground), help the environment? How does putting sea salt BACK into Puget Sound harm it? Considering how rare it is, I doubt there is any issue.

Most of the roads are back to normal now, there has been now 4 days above freezing, with some heavy rains too. Some self proclaimed "experts" (the modern equivalent of the fortune teller) claim that winter is not over yet, and will get worse before it gets better (based on the pseudoscience of weather forecasting-modern numerology really). As if they could possibly know that.

[deejay1272]

Ah - Portland didn't see even one inch from this storm. I was very jealous at the time, and even more so now! Great photos, Petros:)

[Petros]

last 5 days we got on and off another 6 inches of wet snow. roads are all clear now and it is warming up, so it will be gone soon. Really unusual to get so much snow this late. The same thing happened last year right about now. Must be all that global warming....