Snow and Wind

We've had a long streak of out of the ordinary winter weather here in Seattle. We usually get some snow once a winter. We are already on our third storm in a week! The temperature has not been above freezing since last Saturday. Tonight's storm is supposed to be the worst of all because of the strong winds that go with it.

We live about one block and down a hill from a main highway here in Kent. Our condominuim complex is sheilded from a lot of the snow so I wanted to go outside and see what was really going on out there. Right now the temperature is 23 degrees. If you figure in the wind chill factor it feels like 9 degrees. The wind is blowing at 18 miles per hour, which doesn't sound like much but while climbing the hill to Pacific Highway I had to stop and face away from the wind for a few minutes. Any part of my face that was exposed to the wind began to hurt. With howling wind come snow drifts and almost white out conditions. Pacific Highway hardly has any traffic. The State Department of Transporation has asked us not to drive if we don't have to.

Here are a couple of photos and a short video I took while outside. I wanted to take photos when I was up at Pacific Highway but the wind was blowing so strongly in my face I just couldn't hold the camera up to take the photos.

This photo was taken from my deck just as the snow started falling: