Seattle weather prognosticators (Edmonds, Snohomish: home, school, maintenance)

[wythors]

The weather is a Big Deal in the Seattle news market. All of the local network affiliates have their big STORM WATCH!!!!!!!! segments on the evening news when something out of the ordinary is scheduled. My experience is that, 9 times out of 10, any major weather event that is predicted generally doesn't materialize. Case in point: since the day before yesterday they have been predicting "damaging high winds" coming into the area this afternoon. This morning, the headline on the Times' website said basically "Nevermind, we were wrong" and that the wind-generating system has slipped by and into British Columbia. Well, right now the wind is blowing about 40mph through downtown Seattle.

Moral of the story, if you want to know what the weather forecast is for Seattle, look out the window or walk out the door because the weathermen can't predict squat.

[scirocco22]

Weather in the Seattle area is notoriously difficult to predict. However, with today's technology, I really believe they've improved in the last decade. Sure, I agree, everytime they predict a big catastrophic weather event, it never seems to happen or happens with much lesser intensity than first predicted.

However, you've lived in the area almost as long as I have, Wythors. I bet you remember the two or three snowstorms that just came out of nowhere and were never predicted. Back then, their forecasting techniques left a lot to be desired.

The two that I remember the most vividly were the one that started to dump snow a few days berore new years day 1968 and snowed on and off where it almost seemed that there was snow on the ground all the way through the latter part of January. They never predicted that.

The other one that was very memorable to me was the pre-Thanksgiving storm of 1985 where it was raining all morning and about mid-afternoon, it started snowing and made it almost impossible for people to get home that night. I can remember it snowing so hard and the temperatures dropping so suddenly that I couldn't believe it was happening. It looked as if we were in Minnesota. The temperature was actually below 20 degrees and snowing so hard in downtown Seattle that it seemed that we were up somewhere in the mountains. It literally came out of nowhere and the weather forecasters were just dumbfounded. I'm sure with all the technical sophistication of today's forecasting devices that it could have been tracked a bit sooner to warn those that had to spend the night in their cars. I can remember hundreds of people standing at bus stops and waiting futilely for buses that never came because they were all stuck without chains.

There were a few more memorable ones through the years but those two stick in my mind because they didn't give any warning.

[41Willys]

I was used to that in Colorado. One minute it is nice and sunny, but when you see cloud's coming up over the Rockies the weather would changed within minutes! The forecasters have a "RUFF" job. In Seattle unless it's summer time partly to mostly cloudy with a chance of showers would be a good guess no?

A snow storm in the city of Seattle? Do you guy's even have any plow's? Salt spreader's? There must have been dozen's of accident's with all those steep hill's.

I could remember back in 1978 I was in elementary in NY and we got almost 3 feet. Power was off for day's and school was closed for a week! The following week was winter vacation so we got a little bonus. That was the biggest storm I remember. We used to get a lot of hurricanes too.

[scirocco22]

To answer your question about how many plows and sanders the city has from their website:

Staffing and Equipment

* During a snow & Ice event SDOT crews switch to 12-hour shifts to ensure 24-hour coverage. Street Maintenance has two general Street Maintenance Managers who report to the Street Maintenance Director.
* There are approximately 38 Truck Drivers and 21 Equipment Operators to staff equipment and maintain the stockpiles in the yards.
* A total of 27 trucks are fitted with snowplows and sand spreaders.
* A total of 3 trucks and 1 grader are fitted with plows.
* A total of 1 truck is outfitted as an anti-icing truck.
* These trucks are used every day for activities such as filing potholes, flushing streets, and carrying materials to and from the work site for paving.

Equipment on Site

* Trucks Fitted with Snowplows and Sanders: 27
* Trucks fitted with Snow Plows: 3
* Graders that can be used as snowplows in tandem with a sand spreader: 1
* Liquid De-icer truck: 1
* Front-end Loaders: 5
* Various Trucks for support Activities: 44
* Mechanical Street Sweepers for sand clean-up: 7

The city has a priority system worked out where they take into consideration major arterials, etc. Bus routes are afforded the most priority. Many streets on hills are closed when they get too much snow and/or ice.

[mayfair]

There was a big snowstorm in February of 88 or 89 (?) - the roads were iced over for about a week and the busses only stopped at the bottom of the hill. (I was a Metro commuter at the time).

The bus was standing room only, everyone crammed on because people abandoned their cars and took the bus. Many had umbrellas up against the snow! I can't remember if that was predicted or not, but it was a big one.

It was very arctic and kind of fun if you didn't have to drive.

[scirocco22]

Yeah, mayfair, I think that one was the first time ever in Metro's history that they actually canceled bus service for an entire day. It was at the tail end of that string of storms. Granted, it was a Sunday but they never have entirely canceled bus service until that day and haven't since. I remember driving across the Evergreen bridge the day before and it was just covered in potholes of ice. I've never seen the bridge that way since.

[mayfair]

'rocco- I remember when they cancelled the busses that Sunday! I had forgotten about that 'til you brought it up. It was an amazing storm. I was fresh from the midwest and still had all my snow clothes, so it was no big deal except for the roads. And the chaos!

[SaltyDawg]

That Denver and Seattle are the two toughest metro areas in which to predict weather.

Denver has a gargantuan mountain range on one side and nothing stopping weather coming in from the other three directions, so it's incredibly changeable. It's why they can go from 75 and sunny to 28 and snowing literally in a day.

For Seattle, you have TWO mountain ranges and a huge body of saltwater to contend with. In my life here, I've learned that the microclimates are more extreme than i thought. If you live North of the King/Snohomish county line, you get a TON more weather than you do if you live South of it. Eastside gets more rain in the winter and warmer temperatures in the summer. Seattle proper actually gets more rainshadow days from the Olympics than you'd expect, when weather comes from the due West.

We really haven't had the ridiculous, piled-high snowstorm in a while. The most recent really bad one was (I think) in 95 or 96 when about 6-8" of snow fell, and then warmed up quickly to heavy rain. Flat roofs collapsed all over the city with the weight, and the streets ended up being snow with rivers of water running through the tire track areas.

We're probably due for another snowstorm one of these winters...

[wythors]

The Edmonds marina collapsed in that one.