There’s an inside joke here. When I moved to Seattle five years ago, I had to figure what absolutely had to come with me right then and what could be left to bring up later. My initial hosts told me not to worry about bringing up my snow boots because it rarely snowed here. It was too temperate, they said.
So that first winter, it snowed badly enough to shut down my workplace for two days. The next winter, it snowed badly enough a couple of times that I couldn’t get from my home to anywhere else safely. The third winter, it did that a few times.
Last winter (when Seattle was shut down by snow for a couple of weeks), I finally had the opportunity to go home for Christmas, and the very first thing I packed when I was preparing things to ship up here was my snow boots. I knew at the time that this winter would be fairly mild, simply because I’d finally have my snow boots handy.
Lo and behold, we’re rapidly approaching the end of January, and we have had no snow in this part of the Sound. We’ve had some lovely frost, but no snow. (And yes, I just knocked on wood.)
