Seattle has a snow freakout even without any snow!

Seriously, snow was forecast yesterday so all the schools were cancelled.

Not a single flake fell in Seattle area. To the north, lots. To the south, tons. But in Seattle and immediate environs? Nada. To paraphrase the weather service, if the snow were a doughnut, Seattle would would be the hole.

It made up for it today though. Yesterday in T-town, we got aabout 1-2 inches, which mostly melted during the day. Last night we got about 2 more inches but conditions weren't all that bad. The roads were clear. But we figured something was up because while waiting for the bus to Seattle, the station agent told us that the bus trips were taking two hours (it's normally 45-60 minutes). So we waited 1/2 hour for the last commuter train and when the train pulled into Tukwila (about 10 miles south of downtown Seattle), I understood why traffic was so bad. It was snowing really heavily and it was near white-out conditions. 

And it snowed heavily all day. Offices were sending their employees home (half of our office didn't even make it in today). Even the local Starbucks was closing its doors at 1pm. Oscar's office closed at 3pm. Given how long the bus trips were taking this morning, we both decided to take an early train home. The train is wonderful. Never affected by traffic, and almost never affected by bad weather. 

Note I said almost never.  We took the 4:20, pulled out of the station, traveled the six miles to the Georgetown area...and sat there for almost 40 minutes. The intercom wasn't working in the car we were in but one of the staff came by and said there was ice on the rails, so we had to sit. An inconvenience for us, but really, really crappy for the folks waiting at Tukwila for the train. Most of the train stations are part of transit centers and are really quite nice. Tukwila exists essentially for workers at Boeing and there's nothing there except a parking lot for shuttle buses and it's next to a swamp. The platform is literally plywood. There's no place for them to go, no businesses around, and no building to huddle inside. These poor folks were out there in the cold for almost an hour but no one complained when the train finally arrived. I think they were all too cold to do anything but shiver. 

No problems until the final stretch when the train stopped again for another 20 minutes, just outside of Tacoma. 

Despite the two hour train ride, I'm glad we decided to leave early. The train I normally take was cancelled.