And all the snow we've had--Snowmageddon!--since February 8th. We are totally unprepared for it in the Pacific Northwest; I've heard that Olympia has about three snowplows and in Tacoma, to the north of us, there are 12. The amount of snowfall varied in the South Sound, but we seemed to get 20 inches.
It's been a bi...uh, bear to get through and it's probably not over yet. Yesterday, Day Six, saw the snowplow finally make it to my neighborhood. Which means that on the second day, I could escape my driveway but nothing more and I missed my first KAOS show in over six years (it was in 2012 for job training I had in L.A.; in 2008, there was also a snow situation similar to today's mess).
Thankfully, one of my jobs gave me days off and emergency weather pay, but I had to shovel snow under the car tires every couple of hundred feet before I could get out of the neighborhood and travel to the jobs that weren't giving me snow pay. I only got out because some of my neighbors had grooved the streets with tire tracks from their four wheel drive vehicles. At some of the stores I've been to, there's no budget for snow clearing and I saw people in nice suits and shoes stepping into slushy snow probably a foot deep. I had to as well, which taught me to wear my heavy boots everywhere since the day I went through several pairs of socks and cursed myself for wading through that gray crap on the ground.
We've had some sunshine here and some melting snow, yet the National Weather Service says more of it is on the way. If I'm crabby as hell, you'll know why. But as annoying and frustrating as Northwest weather conditions are, it's not an emergency, and neither is the stuff Donald Trump is trying to fool us with.