Yet again the Seattle area has shown its weakness when it comes to a couple inches of snow falling on the city.  I was able to make it to work just fine on Monday morning, but my commute home was more than doubled (and I was extremely luckily that's it) when the show started falling in the early afternoon.  Tuesday wasn't much better with all the ice and snow on the roads, so I decided it was a better use of my time to just work from home.  I made my conference calls just fine and emails were exchanged as normal.  Why spend half my day on the road to work for only a couple hours when I can stay at home and get only a couple hours of actual work done and spend time with my family?  :)  Today was a different story, however.  Today I knew it was going to be pointless to try to go in to work - not primarily because of the road conditions, but because it's the biggest travel day of the year.  My commute to work AND home would have been greatly increased due to all of the traffic volumes on the road.  Not my idea of a good time - and why add to everyone else's stress?  Luckily for me, the libraries are actually open today, so I can get out of the house to focus on getting my work done.

I think I've figured out why Seattle drivers are so freaky when it starts to snow around here - because the City and surrounding areas are consistently ill-prepared for the events and they know they really will be stuck for 5, 7, or even 9 hours on the road trying to get home.  We don't get snow like that often, but when we do it's the same thing every time.  Last time they were just totally unprepared.  This time they got the salt, sand, and de-icer trucks out there, but didn't expect that the melting snow would dilute the materials they spread on the road and just cause massive icing anyway.

I think when the City can consistently prove they can adequately plow and treat the roads, the people who have to drive on them will stop freaking out that they’ll be stuck for so long.  It would also greatly help the City’s cause if people were better experienced at driving in the snow, but there’s only so much you can do about that.  I'm still laughing at the Twitter hashtag of #snOMG.

 
Until then, we can just hope it melts soon and it doesn't stop too many of our families from making it to Thanksgiving celebrations.

Happy Turkey Day everyone!