Weather Wap

For all you nay-sayers who have been complaining that "the Northwest is too cold, brrr!, no, no, can't possibly move to the Northwest, oh no no no, too cold, yes, too cold...."

Yesterday, while the entire North American continent was gripped in a deep freeze, with temperatures like six degrees in Dallas/Fort Worth, it was a toasty 42 degrees here in the Puget Sound area, thanks to that Humboldt current. We had a couple of mild snow flurries a week ago, but it's all gone now. There's fog and black ice in the pre-dawn hours, but our winters are nowhere near as bad as say, Chicago or New Jersey.

Yeah, our winters here are cloudy and gray and nasty and depressing, I'll grant you that. November and December seem endless, but once January hits you start getting cold but CLEAR days and they're getting longer in any case. Snow is rare, and it doesn't bury the landscape for three months at a time like it does in some parts of the continent. Temperatures can be nippy but nothing like the eleven below in Denver that's killing the homeless as we speak; it is very seldom below freezing here, and then not for any length of time. It is rare on a winter's day in the Puget Sound when it doesn't hit at least 40.

The interior of the Homeland is a different kettle of fish, granted. Definitely a Winter Wonderland in Spokane and Idaho. But the comparatively mild winters are one reason I chose the Puget Sound and I-5 corridor area.

This idea that the Pacific Northwest is some kind of perpetual ice box is ridiculous--and those who claim that "oh, the Northwest is too cold, we can't move there..." are the same people who spend their entire murderous, oven-like summers in Tucscon or Houston or Philadelphia with their faces buried in the vents of their air conditioners, their ears flapping in the frigid mechanical blast. Meanwhile up here in the Homeland it's green and sunny and bright and 66 degrees out.