It’s December 23rd, and the biggest thing going on with most people around here is the 16+ inches of snow we've gotten since last Wednesday night.  Seattle doesn't get snow too often, so it doesn't deal well with it.  And there are a lot of people that have never driven on snow before who are driving on these roads.  But the people that scare me the most are the ones who think because they're from <insert favorite place that regularly gets snow>, they can handle driving around here with no problems. 

They're wrong. 

The problem here isn't that it snows.  The snow here is no more treacherous than most "first snow of the season"s that I recall:  The ground starts out warm enough to melt the snow, but then it gets cold, so there's a layer of nasty ice underneath the snow.  But that's how it was in Salt Lake City, and Pocatello, and I'd guess that how the first snow of the season hits, all the time.  The trouble can be described mathematically, as 2 ratios:  The number of hills to the number of plows, and the number of cars to the number of plows.  I suspect both ratios are like 35,000:1.

There are no snow plows out keeping the streets from turning into solid snow floor while it’s snowing.  The primary arteries are all generally clear, for the same reason that they are clear anywhere:  more people drive on ‘em.  But when the secondary roads finally get a snow plow on ‘em, the plows wind up just ripping chunks out of the previously flat, relatively maneuverable snow floor, leaving behind a road that honestly reminds me of bouncing around on back roads in the middle of nowhere Idaho in my step-dad’s 4x4 pickup truck.  Try driving on roads like that, except where the dirt & rocks are just chunks of ice.  Then there are neighborhood streets:  You’re fine if it’s level, but I’d bet about 95% of the neighborhood streets have some random twist/turn/hill/roundabout, etc… every 350 yards or so.  And where ever there’s a turn/bend/bump people drive in different places on that road, so you wind up with everywhere that you might slide turning into an area that you can’t help but slide, thanks to the layer of ice underneath.

I hate driving, but I threw chains on Amy’s van and had no problems putting around the area.  But driving around here in snow is nothing like driving anywhere that gets regular snow.  So go ahead & make your snarky comments about how you can drive on snow.  But until you’ve done it around here, you have no idea what driving on Seattle snow is like. 

-Kev