Its Global Cooling!

If you watched NFL Football last night you will have noticed that we finally got a healthy dumping of snow here in Seattle.

Please feel lucky that you did not have to drive around in it. It is pretty much common knowledge that the Seattle area has a rather larger number of America’s worst drivers, even in perfect weather.

We routinely let our Sunday drivers out a day or two early, three-way and four-way stops are non-functional as everyone tries to out-polite each other by waving the car who doesn’t have the right of way through first, people stop for green lights rather regularly, just to name a few of the things you will find on the roads in this area.

Adding a couple inches of snow is not taken as a hint to stay home by our less confident drivers, it is to them, rather a sign to leave their houses and drive as oddly as possible within the realm of standard physics.

It is also a sign to people who are leaving a major league sports event to not get on the roads immediately, but to instead go hang out at a nearby drinking establishment for four to five hours, and THEN try to drive home.

I got my necessary work finished at my job in Seattle and clocked out shortly after 0200 to drive the 30 miles to my home in Tacoma. My work is very near the interstate and I live not too far from it as well, so this trip usually takes around 25-30 minutes.

As I rolled into my driveway at 0525, I was thinking that maybe I should have just stayed at work and gotten paid instead of burning a 1/5 of a tank of gas trying to see the inside of my home.

If you would like to hear of this (mis)adventure, please follow me below the fold.

So I punch out and leave the parking lot. Slicker than snot, all black ice.

You see, after the snow stopped falling it warmed up for just the slightest of moments. Then, without much of a warning, the wind picked up, bringing with it a chill factor of ungodly numerics. It went from 29 degrees to 20 in less than 15 minutes.

The end result was to flash freeze every drop of moisture that wasn’t moving. Throughout my entire route, there was no piece of pavement that didn’t have at least a half-inch of ice on it, and for most of it, there were 2-3 inches of compacted ice.

Taking the interstate was right out since I had entertained myself during my last couple hours at work by firing up a second PC and watched the WSDOT traffic cams. I’ll just say that watching the little pairs of lights go round and round and round was mildly funny for that last couple hours.

I decided that since I was pretty sure they would sand a certain surface highway numbered 99, that that was the path I’d take home. Bad choice on my part. Within 15 minutes of leaving work, I hit the first back-up. It started at S 204th St and went down to S 242th St.

Here is a map

It took me just over two hours to travel that distance, while riding over two to three inches of compact ice. It was so bad that at one point I decided that just putting my truck in park would be the best plan.

That was another bad idea on my part. You know how the roads are arched so as to make the water run from the center down to the gutter drains? Well, the second my shifter lever hit the leftmost postition, I started sliding in the direction of the gutters.

Seattle is somewhat known for its “rugged landscape” (aka – hills). These are not fun to deal with when driving on compact snow and ice. Shifter all the way to the right in the hard 1st gear position, light on the pedal keeping the RPMs below 1200 and I’m still turning the wheel lock to lock on what little level ground there was trying to keep it going straight, whilst among a couple thousand of my fellows.

You say you have studded tires? HA! This ice laughs at your studded tires. Chains? The ice won’t laugh at you, but it will smirk and giggle. I saw no successful vehicular traction devices on any vehicle under 30000 GVW. The bigger trucks with chained and interlocked duals did the best, but even they had a tough time on some of the inclines/declines.

Oh, and just to let you know what was holding up traffic at that southernmost intersection: Public Transportation. Yep, a King County Metro bus had tried to traverse the intersection and failed, blocking all lanes in all directions. I luckily arrived two cars behind the 90000 GVW wrecker whose driver decided that pushing the bus out of the way was the best idea, and I was able to follow in the tracks left my his chains for a good 1000 yards.

For home game sporting events, King County Metro offers free rides to the games for folks willing to wait at their local park and ride lot, and then back to the P&R lot after the game. However, by the end of last night’s game, the KCM Admin had decided to cancel return trip service for 90% of the folks who rode in on the busses, due to the weather conditions.

Just a little hint to the KCMA: Leaving folks from the burbs stranded in downtown Seattle is not a very good way to sell people on taking public transportation.

There were at least five other KCMA busses stranded along my route home, and adding to that chaos, the sheer number of wrecked/abanodned private vehicles astounded even myself. Every two hundred yards or so along Pacific Hwy S was at least one wreck or abandoned vehicle, but they were usually in groups of three or four. There were also plenty of ominous tracks left in the snow by vehicles leaving the road or crossing the medians into oncoming traffic.

I, on the other hand, made it home without so much as a scratch, though it took me 3.25 hours because of everyone else.

To add a little excitement to the story: Just as I was in, quite literally, the home stretch, an early 70’s Ford F-100 going the opposite direction of myself, found out about the conundrum of four wheel drum brakes and too much speed. After his 540 degree spin, his ass end jumped the median and was heading rather swiftly towards me.

Seeing this little escapade and knowing what would happen if I did a certain thing due to having been doing said certain thing for three hours, I ever so barely-more-than-gently applied my brakes, which pulled me into the empty right hand lane of this 5-lane road, and let him pass me on up, to hit someone else at a future time.

That is, if he ever gets off that last tall section of median.

And that is it for me folks. I have already been told that there will not be a crew of my co-workers out today, so I do not have to go to work tonight. Therefore, I may be back later today, so long as the jackasses on the roads don’t go knocking out my cable connection.

But right now, I need some rack time.

Be careful folks.