Tuesday, December 25, 2007
First White Christmas in Over 26 Years
Just testing to see if the videos from this new camera are worth fooling with. This is the first white Christmas for at least 26 years in this area, as long as my family has lived here. I tried looking up when the last white christmas was in Seattle and found no information. Wikipedia gives a list of cities with odds of there being snow on the ground on Dec. 25. Seattle gets 8% odds. This is probably higher than reality if you only go by the last twenty years here. It was notably colder in this area in the mid to early 20th century. When I was a kid, you never saw rabbits or racoons around, and now they're everywhere. In the 90's my dad (being a nature buff) was astonished that we were seeing different species of birds and animals along the coast where he went fishing that normally didn't travel this far south (this was before anyone said anything about global warming, and everything was just blamed on more and more frequently occuring El Ninos). Over time he was particularly proud that his garden seemed to bloom earlier and the growing season was a bit longer (his excellent gardening skill of course). There was a periods of 2 weeks when I was a kid that the temperature didn't get above freezing here. This doesn't come close to happening anymore. There are photos in the local shops of our harbor taken from the earlier 1900's that show it completely frozen over thick enough so that cars could literally drive across it. Modern locals look at the pictures with amazement because we know that it never comes remotely close to getting cold enough to freeze salt water *that* thick (admittedly there is a fresh water stream that helps out a bit). Even this white Christmas, the temperature was actually 34, and it was only snowing at the top of our hill. It was almost all melted within hours, but we got about 3/4" and it might snow again tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
We've had almost two feet of snow up in Vermont, the first time in a while we've had that much snow so shortly after Thanksgiving. Old-timers are calling it an old fashioned Christmas. As for fauna, New England boasts herds of Wild Turkey. We have our own troop in our backwoods and yard. They are big, big birds -- convincingly ugly in a beautiful sort of way.
When I lived in Olympia, I remember that it would seldom snow. We just visited friends of ours in MA. They just moved from Olympia, having lived there for more than a decade. Not quite so bleak and gray in New England, they say. Or, when it's gray, not quite so dark. Snow helps.
Still don't know when the last white christmas was. My co-worker said at least 30 years, because that's when she first came here.
The late fall and winter here are absolutely horrible. But it is gorgeous during the summer. Everyone comes during the summer and decides to move here, then they notice that it rains continuously for an entire month.
Lewis and Clark noted that when they reached the Pacific it rained every day for a month. Cold rain. Their journals desribe their misery. One or both seriously contemplated suicide.
But we moderners just drink coffee, and play our guitars.
Post a Comment