Today it snowed in Seattle for the first time this year. This seems like a small matter, yet through the lens of one who experienced the “Snowpocalyse” of 2008, as it is known, discussion of snow in downtown Seattle is no small matter. As Ryan and I sat in Le Pichet today watching the snow silently begin to fall outside, I returned to the blizzard that shut down the city of Seattle only two years ago.

The month of December began with talk of snow, and all of the seasoned Seattleites warned me not to take the talk seriously. Coming from the South, my first inclination was to stock the house with food in case of being stranded. In the southern states, the mere mention of snowflakes garners swarms of people to the nearest grocer to buy bread and milk. Why bread and milk? Who knows. I lived there twenty-seven years, and I have no idea.

Yet still, I was told snow would be a few flurries – surely nothing would stick – and no white Christmas. I was sad, as I’ve always dreamed of having a white Christmas, and I was spending my first Christmas “away from home”, i.e. away from my family. The thought of a white Christmas delighted me.

Then it happened – so much snow Seattle ceased to function for two whole weeks! I found it fascinating to run around in the snow and didn’t care (much) that my fingers and toes were mostly frozen. I was seeing Seattle from a new (and very white) perspective.

I loved it, despite the extreme havoc it caused. Because this had not happened in downtown Seattle before, the city was ill-prepared. Metro buses were stuck in the snow and abandoned throughout the city, as most of Seattle is hills – very large hills. No one could safely drive or ride, and walking was hazardous, as there were blankets of ice covering the sidewalks. It was hit or miss if buildings would clear their sidewalks, so walking was pretty dangerous too.

With the focus on environmental sustainability, salting the roads was frowned upon. So the city decided to sand the roads instead. (I was puzzled too). So they’d sand the roads, then during the day it would melt a bit, then refreeze over night, which wasn’t very conducive to creating conducive transit. Comically (at least to some) was that once all of the snow inevitably melted, they had a bunch of sand to clean up. Amazing.

All of this to explain that there was a lot of drama surrounding the Snowpocalypse. So today as I ate my hot onion soup and gazed out the front windows of Le Pichet, part of me hoped (and continues to hope) for just a bit of the malarkey and community we Seattleites enjoyed two years ago.

Photos from the Seattle Snowpocalypse 2008 »

Sidenote: I just looked up how to spell “Seattleite” properly – and yes, I realize it’s not actually a word – and this is one of the definitions I found: “Is easily agitated when tourist asks to see the original Starbucks, Microsoft or Kurt Cobain’s house. True Seattleites do not care for these things” (Source). Ha. True that.

Ryan took this photo from the top of a building on the corner of 14th and Pine the first night it snowed.