The Rain is driving me nuts

[HotRutteredBum]

It's been pissin down rain here in Sea-town all FUGIN day and up in the hills they say its goiing to get colder but this rain is killin me I NEED SOME MORE SNOW

[bad_roo]

Snow? Overrated.

[KQ]

Western Wash. school and road closures
01:28 PM PST on Tuesday, November 18, 2003


School closures

The Hood Canal School District will be closing at 10 a.m. Hood Canal Students that attend Shelton High School will be released at 10 a.m. due to the weather conditions.

Timbercrest Junior High School in Woodinville is closed due to a power outage.

City of Seattle street flooding

Aurora Ave. north of the Ship Canal

Soutbound Aurora Ave. at Republican

Mercer St. underneath Aurora Ave.

Dexter Ave.

6th and Stewart

3rd and Vine St.

Delridge Way SW to eastbound West Seattle Freeway

Buses rerouted

King County Metro buses are being rerouted off Aurora Avenue North between North 46th Street and the Battery Street Tunnel. This affects routes 358, 16 and 5. The buses are being diverted to the Fremont Bridge, and then traveling via Westlake and Dexter avenues.

Street flooding

City of Shoreline

Richmond Beach Rd. NW at 3rd Ave. NW

NE 195th and 25th Ave NE - Ballinger/Lake Forest Park border of Shoreline

Bothell Way near Lake Forest Park Shopping Center

City of Kirkland

Intersection of Lake Washington Blvd. And Northrup Way

City of Redmond

4700 West Lake Sammamish Parkway E. at Marymoor Park

City of Bellevue

Kamber Rd. east of Richards Road

King County

Old Stevens Pass Highway at Miller River Road near Skykomish

SE Reinig Road from 396th Drive SE to Meadowbrook Bridge

SE Mill Pond Road from Meadowbrook Bridge to Tokul Road SE

Snohomish County

N. Sauk River Rd. from Mile Point 0.6 to end

Mt. Loop HWY (Forest Service portion) from Barlow Pass to Bedal

Monte Cristo Grade Rd from Mountain Loop Hwy to end

Mann Road from 311 Ave SE to end

From Mann Rd north to Skyview Drive

From 311 Ave SE to Cedar Ponds Road

Mason County

Tahuya River Rd.

Skokomish Valley Rd.

West Bourgault Rd.

Skagit County

Cascade River Road

Road closures reported by Washington State Department of Transportation

SR 106, west of Union - The 20-mile highway, serving the town of Union, is open for local traffic only, through much of the highway is reduced single-lane alternating traffic. WSDOT crews continue to remove debris along the entire length of the route.

SR 112 east of Sekiu - A landslide below the roadway has caused undermining of the roadway at milepost 15.9. Crews were able to repair the roadway and it is now open to two-way traffic.

SR 112, east of Neah Bay - A sinkhole washed out both lanes of SR 112 at milepost 0, just east of Neah Bay near the entrance to Makah reservation. The sink hole is approximately 150-feet wide and 40-feet deep. The roadway is open to single-lane alternating traffic.

SR 20, Skagit to Okanogan County - From Newhalem to the Early Winters Campground,(MP 120-170) the highway is closed due to multiple mud and rockslides, as well as water damage to the roadway.

SR 221 MP 13 to 22, south of Prosser. - Closed due to strong gusty winds and poor visibility. reopen time undetermined. Detour available via local roads.

Highway 410, Cayuse Pass east of Mount Rainier is closed for the winter.

[tibaher]

On the up side, I now have an all natural slip and slide in my basement. Party tonight! Oh yeah

[Snow Dog]

Rain here, snow there.


You'd think Seattle could deal with a little rain.

[KQ]

Just a little rain:


http://www.king5.com/topstories/L_IM...0.1ac73ff2.jpg

[The AD]

I already said this over on Powder, but my wife called me from her car this morning. She made the mistake of trying to take Aurora from our house to downtown. She had gone 2.5 miles in 1.5 hours!

[Buster Highmen]

Evidently, it's a short trip with good mileage.

[Samwich]

Originally posted by Snow Dog
Rain here, snow there.


You'd think Seattle could deal with a little rain.

If it was snowing in the mountains, I'd love it. Unfortunately, the snow level is at 6500'. Crystal's base lost about 10" today alone. It wasn't really snowing up top either...

And to all the Baker locals that are about to gloat because your mountain got snow and mine didn't: save it. Please. I'm sad enough already.

[Chronic]

There are two routes I can take into work that generally take about the same amount of time: I-5 or Hwy 99. Today was a coin flip on which one to take. Thank God I-5 won the flip, I can't imagine being stuck in traffic that bad, I would definitely go berserk.

Crystal will recover its base soon enough, hopefully over the next few days...

[BakerBoy]

You brought it on yourself Sammy!

MT. BAKER CURRENT CONDITIONS
SNOWFALL
NEW: 10 since this morning! in 24 cm
LAST 24 HOURS: 20 in 51 cm

TEMPERATURE: 30 °F -1 ° C
WEATHER: Snowing Heavily
BASE AT HEATHER MEADOWS: 50 in 127 cm
BASE AT PAN DOME : 60 in 152 cm
SLOPE CONDITIONS: OPENING Thursday Nov. 20

[CascadeSkiBum]

If it was about 20 degrees colder I'd be a happy man. Looks like they'll be downloading on Chinook at Crystal if they dont get dumped on. 148th in Bellevue was closed due to flooding...making my 6 mile trip home from work take over an hour.

[The AD]

I looked at the Crystal cam a couple times today and it just looked worse and worse after looking damn promising yesterday. That's life in the Pacific Northwest, I guess.

Things can change quickly, though.

[Schmear]

This is a re-run, and I wrote it a while ago, but I feel your pain up there...

Gluttons for Punishment

“What’s the matter, you don’t like skiing in the rain?” The question came from my father-in-law who was smiling wryly through a steady trickle of water draining off of his hood and down his goggles and face.

It wasn’t a question that required answering. It was a volley, a good-natured buck-up-little-camper shot aimed at shaking me out of the gloom I apparently was wearing, for I never said I didn’t want to be out here. Not verbally anyway. When the call came to take a few more runs, I hesitated, keeping quiet in hope that someone else would reason that really, no one had any business being out here, that colors bleed in this kind of downpour, that I prefer my showers indoors with hot water and far less clothing. But in this skiing family I married into, no one gets off easy. Since no one piped up on my behalf, and since I didn't want to lose face, out we went into the monsoon.

It's a hardcore stance, skiing in the rain. I’ve learned to love it the tough way—through repeated voluntary exposure. I have learned to embrace the bitter-tasting Pacific Northwest weather cocktail known as the Pineapple Express.

As above, peer pressure often played a part, but after a while I too began to feel a certain pride in my willingness to get drenched. Soon I was giving others a hard time for their fair-weather attitudes. Skiing in the rain is a rite of passage in western Washington. Not once, not twice, but regularly. If you let rain keep you from making turns, goes the party line, perhaps you aren’t as committed as you thought you were. It's a stupid standard, of course. Many of these non-rain skiers would be out there in blizzard and whiteout conditions in a heartbeat. But, as we reasoned it, rain skiing was reserved for the hardest of the hardcore, lame as the skiing actually was. The paradigm was slow, wet suffering.

Around here, the freezing level is the top-dog stat, and just like the post-tech-boom stock market, it’s wildly mercurial. Snow depth? Who cares, as long as creek beds and last year's brush stubble are covered. Sunny days? You’ve got to be kidding. Skiers watch the freezing level during incoming storms like doctors watch heart monitors: like it’s life or death.

Over time I developed my own indicator: if it’s 48 degrees or cooler in Seattle, and the storm is a southerly, then it’s probably snowing at Alpental. But this is hardly foolproof. Alpental lies in the anything-goes Puget Sound convergence zone, where storms collide from north and south. All bets are off.

Guessing was removed from the equation when the DOT added live traffic Web cams to Snoqualmie Pass. But even so, in the hour and change it may take to reach the summit from town, anything can happen. Hopes rise. They crash and burn. Lather, rinse, repeat.

A friend and I once went night skiing on a weatherman’s promise of cooler temps. There was no use listening to music during the drive—the din from rain hitting the car was deafening. Traffic and car lights were watery blurs, even with wipers on high. We desperately searched the towering, forested highway corridor—what little we could see of it—for any sign of the snow level. Nothing.

We sat in the parking lot, feeling glum, as what seemed like the entire Pacific Ocean raged overhead. The hill was deserted but we got dressed anyway and splashed through deep sucking slush puddles to the chair. There the hooded liftie greeted us with a cold stare. “You don’t want to do it.” We kind of did, actually, and began to click in. It was odd to be discouraged by a hill employee; after all, this is a resort that keeps a back stock of plastic garbage bag-like garments for customers just for these occasions. “Really, don’t do it.” His voice was ominous, foreboding, and above all else, logical. Maybe that’s why we didn’t listen at first. But his stare melted our resolve and in the end we accepted his advice and bolted. We chickened out. Of course we didn’t tell anyone.

Another time I was staying with friends at their Alpental cabin over the holidays. It had been a banner early snow year, but the Pineapple Express steamed into port just in time for my visit. It was so bad the area simply shut down. The rain set off roaring slides, closing the pass for days. It should have been powder paradise, but instead we were stalled under the same old blubbering spray gun in the sky. On day two we had enough, and decided to skin up the modest slope of Chair 3. Amazingly, the rain stopped as we began our climb, but then, as if on cue, the spigot opened again as we prepared to descend.

It’s tough to curse a rain that nurtures ancient and towering cedar and fir trees, that creates a year-round green so lush that you forget what brown looks like. A rain that stabilizes the winter snow pack with acidic-like erosion, and that, in prehistoric times, helped shaped the very slopes on which we schuss.

I had learned my lesson over the years. Love the bomb. Donning my hood, there was only one reaction to the building deluge. I held out my duct tape-covered gloves to catch a few rain drops, then turned to my friends and said, “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

[rip]

Originally posted by HotRutteredBum
.....drivin me nuts...

Whenever I hear someone say this or in this case type it, I always get a chuckle out of it cuz it always reminds me of the joke with the pirate in the bar with a steering wheel in his pants.


ARRR Its drivin me nuts!!!

ok back to hw

[Foggy_Goggles]

Ha, I haven't skied in the rain (not including thunderstorms) in over ten years. My prefernce set up was all my sailing foul weather gear. Sometimes you'd get a sweet corn session just after it started to rain.

[The AD]

Originally posted by Chronic
There are two routes I can take into work that generally take about the same amount of time: I-5 or Hwy 99.

Where do you live Chronic?

[Dr. Crash]

Originally posted by KQ
Just a little rain:
http://www.king5.com/topstories/L_IM...0.1ac73ff2.jpg

Just around my corner. It was wet around here.

drC

[KQ]

And now it's snowing...

I couldn't sleep last night because of the wind and rain. Earlier in the evening I had switched out my horse's heavy blanket for a lighter weight one because it was so humid and warm in the barn.

This morning I wake up and peek out the window to make sure the hillside behind my place is still where it should be and what do I see? SNOW!!! Freakin' SNOW!!! WTF? It was 58 degrees last night and now I've got 3 inches of snow on the ground and it's still coming down. Weird times indeed.

http://www.king5.com/topstories/L_IM...0.1ef257c6.jpg

It's a good thing.

[Schmear]

And this is always a welcome sight.

http://images.wsdot.wa.gov/Snoqualmi...a/westsumt.jpg

[Chronic]

AD - I live in the lovely neighborhood of Maple Leaf (just south of Northgate)

After the torrential warm rains yesterday morning, last night was windy, blustery and rainy. My house felt colder than usual as I went to bed, but I wrote it off to the gusty winds that steal heat from a drafty old house like mine. When I awoke this morning, it seemed a bit brighter out than usual. I must confess that I often peek out the window each rainy winter morning, just in case Ullr visited overnight. Almost always, my gaze is met by the disappointing reflection of the street light off of wet,
rain-soaked pavement. But today there was about an inch of snow blanketing the yard. Yes, it was super-saturated with water, and wasn't really sticking to the road, but it was nice to have a bit of white coating the grass and trees. It bodes well for the upcoming season.

[The AD]

Originally posted by Chronic
AD - I live in the lovely neighborhood of Maple Leaf (just south of Northgate)

I live in Greenwood, so I'm pretty close.

The Rehabits just bought a house in the U District. We've got a nice concentration of maggots in North Seattle.

[char]

I was walking to school today and I passed a parked car with snow on it. "WTF? That guy must have just come over the pass or something." Then I saw another car with snow on it driving by. Weird.

No snow in the U-Dist last night as far as I can tell.

[CascadeSkiBum]

There was about an inch of glop on my car this morning, I was pretty stoked. Another chance of snow locally tonight.